RURAL ECOIOMY, "^ '^- 



IN ITS RELATIONS WITH 



CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS, MD METEOROLOGY; 



CHEMISTRY APPLIED TO AGRICULTURE. 



/ BY 

V * 

J. B. BOUSSINGAULT, 

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, ETC., ETC. 



TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, 



GEORGE LAW, Agriculturist. 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY. 

PHILADELPHIA: 
GEO. S. APPLETON, 148 CHESNUT-ST. 

MDCCCXLV. 

L ■ 






i 



THE 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



In the work now published, I present the results of the inquiries 

a which I have been engaged for many years, and which were un- 

'ertaken in the hope of throwing light upon various points of prac- 

'cal agriculture. My first idea was, to confine myself to the mere 

i*" -impression of the several papers which I had communicated from 

time to time to different periodicals, with the addition of a quantity 

OT inedited matter which I had by me. But upon more mature con- 

,«iieration, I was led to believe that I should be doing a useful thing 

id I fill up the numerous gaps which must necessarily occur be- 

t A^een papers published isolatedly, at dates more or less remote from 

one another, and treating of the most dissimilar subjects. I have 

thus been led, in addition to my own observations, to give those of 

numerous writers on almost every branch of agricultural science, 

being only careful to confine myself in each instance to the most 

authentic practical conclusions ; for it is certain, that practical data 

have the most direct interest for rural economy, both in itself and 

in its bearings upon the general science of political economy. 

I have a further reason for the plan which I have adopted, which 
I am the less disposed to pass by in silence, inasmuch as it may 
plead in excuse with those who might be disposed to criticize the 
tone, perhaps somewhat too didactic, of my work. 

I was invited, in conjunction with several other professors attached 
to a great educational institution, to give a course embracing my 
views upon the science of agriculture. I consented to this, and 
prepared my lectures ; but motives, to which I was entirely a 
stranger, having prevented the project from being carried out, 1 
made up my mind to publish, not the lectures such as I should have 



IV AUTHOR S PREFACE. 

delivered them, but the documents which would have formed the 
basis of my teaching. 

The first part of this work treats in succession of the physical 
and chemical phenomena of vegetation ; of the composition of vege- 
tables and their immediate principles ; of fermentation ; and of soils. 
The second comprises a summary of all that has yet been done on 
the subject of manures, organic and mineral ; a discussion of the 
subject of rotations ; general views of the maintenance and economy 
of live-stock ; finally, some considerations on meteorology and cli- 
mate, and on the relations between organized beings and the atmo- 
sphere. 

I have endeavored, therefore, to give a summary view of all the 
questions of rural economy that admit of scientific treatment. It 
may be found, perhaps, that the number of these questions is still ex- 
tremely small. Nevertheless, in regarding the multitude of inquiries 
that have been instituted within a very few years only, in viewing 
especially the ever-increasing interest attached to researches bear- 
ing upon practical agriculture, we are bound to-anticipate progress, 
and to hope for conclusions important as regards science, profitable 
to practice, and useful to humanity. 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 



The following work is submitted to the agricultural public in the 
fullest confidence that it stands in need of no recommendatory- 
strictures on the part of those who have undertaken to present it in 
its present form to the English agriculturist. In the person of its 
distinguished author the man of science is happily associated with 
the practical farmer — the accomplished naturalist, the profound 
chemist and natural philosopher. The friend and fellow-laborer of 
Arago, Biot, Dumas, and all the leading minds of his age and coun- 
try — M. Boussingault's title to consideration is recognised wher- 
ever letters and civilization have extended their influence. 

Surely the collected and carefully recorded experience of such a 
man, experience by which the conclusions of the member of the In- 
stitute have been tested and weighed by the results of the farmer 
of Bechelbronn, must have value in the estimation of every educated 
mind, and cannot fail to be especially welcome to that class of 
readers who are professionally engaged in the practical application 
of that noble science which his labors have contributed to illustrate 
and advance. 

When the following pages were confided to the editor, it was the 
impression both of the publisher and himself, that in the course of the 
work many points would necessarily arise demanding elucidation, 
others calculated to provoke controversy or challenge investigation, 
and others again which could be rendered available or instructive 
to the British agriculturist only by means of copious explanation, 
showing with what modification and under what circumstances the 
views advanced might be applicable to the art as exercised in the 
climate and soil of this country. But the minute and analytical 
perusal indispensable in the operation of investing the Author's 
thoughts and expressions with an English garb, has demonstrated 
the fallacy of this impression, and if possible has augmented the 
admiration of the untiring patience, the vast experience, and the as- 
tute, circumstantial, and elaborate accuracy of the accomplished 
Author, in whose researches the reader will find the profoundest 
sagacity, combined with a childlike simplicity which communicates 
to his work a charm not necessarily inherent in the subject. 

This is not in'^nded to imply an unqualified approval of the illus- 
trious philosopher's manner of dealing with his own facts and obser- 

1 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

vations ; still less of his style of writing, which is often wandering 
and diffuse, and which, in order to render it presentable to the Eng- 
lish reader, has required much compression and retrenchment. Still, 
however, instead of having, as was expected, to pause at each step 
of the Author's progress, and dissert upon his views upon this or 
that particular branch of his subject, the observations of the com- 
mentator must of necessity be restricted in a great degree to an in- 
dication of such parts of the work as in his judgment are the most 
valuable and instructive, together with such incidental objections as ' 
appear to be of sufficient importance to require stating at length. 

The chemical portion of the work is of inestimable value and con- 
ducted with consummate skill and knowledge ; and with a minute- 
ness and accuracy perfectly unexampled. At the same time the 
results of the writer's researches, as well as the means and process- 
es by which these results were obtained, are displayed with such 
absolute perspicuity as to be intelligible and instructive to every 
agricultural inquirer, however superficial his previous acquaintance 
may be with the details of chemical science. 

Nothing from the pen of the Editor could throw additional light 
upon the Author's brilliant and most interesting elucidation of vege- 
table physiology : his exposition is at once masterly and complete, 
and contains much that is both valuable and new. And even when 
the novelty of the facts which he adduces, or the originality of the 
inferences deduced and unfolded may admit of question, they are 
still deserving of the most respectful attention from the new and 
striking lights in which he places them, and presents them to the 
agricultural reader, and the clear and convincing way in which he 
demonstrates their inter-dependency and their most intimate con- 
nection with many of the most important pecuniary and professional 
interests of the cultivator. Every intelligent farmer will find his 
account not merely in a repeated perusal of this portion of the work, 
but in regarding it as a text-book and manual to be kept by him for 
permanent reference and consultation. 

The arrangement of the subject, naturally and judiciously adopted 
by the writer, presents the consideration of soils as the first topic 
for the observations of the agricultural commentator ; but on this 
head the distinguished author is so thoroughly explanatory and judi- 
cious, that nothing is left for the Editor but to approve, to acquiesce, 
and to recommend him with admiring confidence to the patient con- 
sideration and study of the intelligent inquirer. 

At page 237 the subject of manures is taken up, and discussed 
with characteristic minuteness through many succeeding pages. 

It may perhaps be objected, that the various theories respecting 
the origin, nature, eflicacy, and relative nature of the different ma- 
nures in use, as well as the various modes of their production, con- 
coction, and application, which M. Boussingault has here collated 
and elucidated, contain nothing new ; that they have, in fact, under 
one form or other, been long familiar to practical men ; but without 
impugning the justness of this opinion, the Editor has long been 
convinced that the subject has received, generally, far less care and 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

attention than it so eminently deserves ; and, in short, that it is 
much neglected by many who are accounted not merely intelligent, 
but scientific agriculturists ; and while admitting that much valuable 
information has been frequently given to the agricultural world by 
the repeated experiments of several enterprising individuals both in 
Scotland and England, he still most urgently recommends a careful 
study of this part of the work, which will probably lead the reader 
to the conclusion that the methods and practice reconnnended by the 
Author are, upon the whole, those best worthy of adoption. In 
page 2G0 will be found some very urgent warnings against what 
be (M. lionssingault) regards as the prevalent and pernicious cus- 
tom of turning dung-heaps " frequently." If, however, by the term 
•' frequently," a course not exceeding three complete turnings of the 
heap be comprehended, the Editor can by no means coincide with 
this opinion ; a long experience having convinced him that there 
are many circumstances under which the Author's recommendations 
would be found not merely over-cautious, but positively injurious. 
For drill crops, for instance, when it happens that the farm-dung is 
somewhat rough, which must generally be the case tow^ards the 
close of every season, when the animal dejections are scanty and 
the great bulk of the already ripened manure has been carried out 
upon the land, and the fresh additions have not ha^ the advantage 
of being compounded with matter already concocted, an extra turn- 
ing is very advantageous. 

Every farmer will, of course, turn his heap once, for the purpose 
of thoroughly mixing the various ingredients and different qualities 
of manure which it contains ; the extra turning, even admitting that 
it may to a certain extent promote the over-decomposition of the 
manure, and dissipate the ammoniacal principles which it is impor- 
tant to preserve, is not attended with so great a loss in this respect 
as that which is inevitable from keeping open the drill by the appli- 
cation of coarse dung, which cannot fail to be attended with a most 
serious loss of the more volatile principles, sometimes even laying 
the manure quite bare, and in the case of turnips, materially ob- 
structing the operation of sowing. 

Our Author brings forward the authority of several eminent inqui- 
rers in support of his own favorite view of the use of fresh or un- 
fermented manure ; but however plausible their theories may appear, 
and however just may be their views in the abstract, there are many 
intermitting circumstances connected with the general economy of 
a farm, which must govern and determine their adoption, and in 
which the practical cultivator must be guided by his own judgment 
alone. 

To the Author's 6th chapter the reader may be advantageously 
referred, as containing a very full and valuable description and dis- 
cussion, under the head of mineral manures, of the different varieties 
of the class usually denominated stimulants, and concluding with a 
brief but lucid and interesting account of Water, considered as an 
agent of vegetation, and of its importance for manuring purposes. 

The composition and preparation of liquid manures, as well as the 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

various means of procuring and preserving them, will be found to 
have engaged much of the Author's attention ; and he justly points 
to the rapidity of their ameliorating action as a peculiar excellence, 
not otherwise attainable ; at the same time admitting that in the 
great majority of cases, the great and unavoidable expense at- 
tending their application, however moderate may be the prime-cost 
of the material, has always operated as an insuperable obstacle to 
their general adoption. In the justice of this vital objection, most 
practical agriculturists who have used them to any extent, will read- 
ily concur ; and it will not be uninteresting to the reader to learn 
that there is reason to believe that it will henceforth be effectually 
obviated by the use of a very simple and convenient apparatus, de- 
vised by Mr. Smith of Deanston, a zealous and able friend of agri- 
culture, who at the Highland Society's meeting at Glasgow in 
autumn last, explained the details of his contrivance ; and the Edi- 
tor has reason to suppose that the particulars will be given in a report 
of the proceedings of the meeting, in the forthcoming January publi- 
cation of the Highland Society's Transactions. 

The Editor is anxious to direct especial attention to the Author's 
7th chapter, wherein he treats of the organic and inorganic manures, 
and of crops — of the elements of manures and of crops with their 
relations inter se, &c. — a section of the work which presents, in 
synopsis, a more' copious and complete body of new, interesting, and 
important facts, of a nature more valuable to the practical farmer, 
than has ever been collected in any previous treatise on agricultural 
science. The great mass of this invaluable information is condensed, 
as it were, for practical reference, and displayed in copious and 
elaborate tabular data — a form which, though not attractive, has 
enabled the writer to comprise within succinct and manageable limits, 
a quantity of instruction which, in a more discursive shape, must 
have distended the work to double its actual size. The tables ad- 
verted to, present not merely the results of multifarious experiments 
in illustration of the important subject of rotation-cropping, but also 
these results as especially affected by the application of the various 
manures to which the several experimenters had recourse. The 
rotations reported may appear strange and curious, and sometimes, 
perhaps, even amusing to the farmers of England and Scotland ; 
but not more so, in all probability, than those which are followed in 
many parts of our Island would appear to the cultivators of that 
part of Europe where our Author's agricultural speculations have 
been carried on, and where the bulk of his analyses have been ob- 
tained : indeed, locality and climate, and their inseparable concomi- 
tants, will in every country be found to prescribe and control the 
sorts of crops which may be rendered the most subservient to the 
permanent advantage both pecuniary and economical of the hus- 
bandman. Thus, with regard to the Author's more didactic obser- 
vations and positive directions on the subject of rotations, there is no 
reason to doubt that, in relation to the soil, climate, and geographical 
position of the east of France, where his experimental course of 
rotations has been conducted, they are highly judicious, and have 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

not been prescribed and required without mature consideration. 
Moreover, they are marked, like the deductions and inferences upon 
which they are founded, by his unusual acumen, patience, and saga- 
■ city ; but in their application to the more circumscribed range of 
culture to which the agriculturist is limited in the ruder and more 
fickle climates of north and of south Britain, the practice of the cul- 
tivator must be governed mainly by his own judgment and experi- 
ence in the circumstances by which he finds himself surrounded. 

The interesting and ample instruction conveyed in the observa- 
tions of this acute and profound observer upon the food and alimen- 
tary treatment of cattle of every species, accompanied as .they are 
by minute details of the results obtained in the shape of organic and 
inorganic elements, cannot be too urgently recommended to the at- 
tentive consideration of every one interested in that important branch 
of rural economy to which they more particularly relate. 

The Author's strictures comprehend the economy of the domestic 
animals with the exception of sheep, a subject from which he pro- 
fessedly abstains, for the very sufficient reason, that in his opinion, 
his opportunities of obtaining accurate information thereupon have 
not been sufficiently ample to enable him to discuss it with confidence 
and advantage. His theory in favor of the superior fattening quali- 
ty of hay and the grasses in general above that which is found in 
tubers and roots, (though apparently supported by his usual convin- 
cing appeal to experiment,) will be received with considerable al- 
lowance by the practical farmer. 

We have many instances, in the present day, of theories ably, 
plausibly, nay even satisfactorily established, which are nevertheless 
met by opposite results in practice ; and the hesitation which the 
Editor ventures to intimate upon the particular point in question, 
will, he doubts not, be readily concurred in by many experienced 
feeders. It will be generally admitted that the boiled or steamed 
potato possesses a much higher nutritive value than belongs to it 
when in the raw state. In the former case, however, it requires to 
be mixed with some of the other roots which are not characterized 
by the same property, such as beet, turnips, &c. ; the Swede, (Ruta- 
baga,) or any of the harder sorts are best adapted for this purpose, 
and form a complete counteractive to the dangerous constipating 
tendency of the boiled potato when given alone. 

There are many different substitutes or equivalents in the shape 
of mashes, containing leguminous ingredients which are admitted to 
be fully as nutritious as the potato, still there are circumstances 
connected with market value which render it a most valuable re- 
source in farm alimentation. The popular notion that (when used 
as the feed of horses) the boiled or steamed potato is what is vul- 
garly called " soft meat," tending to unfit them for active work, is 
daily losing ground ; for not only is it rapidly getting into more gen- 
eral use among the farmers of England and Scotland, but even post- 
masters are adopting it for horses employed in road work. 

The meteorological section of the volume will be found no less 
instructive to the agriculturist than fascinating to the general reader; 

I* 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

no equally complete and extensive body of new and interesting facts 
has ever before been presented in a collected form to the agricultural 
world. 

It will be observed that the capital, the all-important subject of 
Draining, as the great master-engine of agricultural improvement, 
is merely touched upon by our Author in a cursory way ; should 
this incite a feeling of disappointment, it must be borne in mind that 
he has accomplished all, and more than all, that he proposed to him- 
self, which was not to write a complete work on practical tillage, 
but rather, as his title implies, on " Rural Economy," i. e., the eco- 
nomic production and application of the produce of the soil under 
the guidance of chemistry. 

Among the faults of execution for which the Translator ventures 
to solicit the agricultural reader's indulgence, is the occasional adop- 
tion of terms which are rather French than English. Many of 
these words are, in the original, not merely technical, but local and 
provincial, and are not inserted in any of the dictionaries. More- 
over, in the description of certain processes and operations, the 
Author has occasionally employed terms for which there is no Eng- 
lish equivalent ; and the Translator had frequently no other choice 
than that of either leaving the sense of the passage obscure and 
defective, or, on the other hand, of adopting the barbarisms in ques- 
tion, which not only deform the English of the construction, but 
cannot fail to be offensive to the taste and professional preposses- 
sions of the agricultural reader. 

With reference to the weights and measures made use of in the 
original, it ma}^ be proper to state, that (against strong temptation 
to let them stand as in the French, merely adding a table of equiva- 
lents) they have, at the instance of the Publisher, been reduced into 
their corresponding quantities in the English standard. Grammes, 
in the more delicate experiments, have been reduced into grains 
troy, assuming the gramme as equal to 15.438 grains; in less deli- 
cate experiments, grammes have been converted into pennyweights 
(dwts.) and ounces troy. Kilogrammes are given in lbs. avoir- 
dupois ; and where the quantity was large, they are often brought 
into tons, cwts., qrs., &c., taking the French kilogramme at 2.3 
lbs. avoirdupois. The Litre, or present French measure of liquids, 
has been reduced into pints, calculating the French measure at 1.76 
pints English imperial measure. The Hectolitre employed in mea- 
suring grain, is rendered into bushels, estimating it at 22 gallons 
English dry measure. The old French Quintal is also sometimes 
employed : this measure of weight has been either reduced to its 
proper corresponding quantity, 1 cwt. 3 qrs. 24 lbs. English, or 
where odd numbers might be disregarded, it has been called 2 cwts. 
The Are, or French superficial measure of quantity, has been cal- 
culated throughout at 120 square yards English : the Hectare at 
2.4 acres English. 

The labor of reducing these measures into their English equiva- 
lents has been immense ; and errors, in spite of the best care which 
could be exerted, have doubtless in various instances crept into the 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

reductions. Slight discrepancies between aggregate sums and their 
component quantities will also be apparent here and there, an inex- 
actness which arises from the number of decimal places not having 
always been carried out far enough. 

Our Author often quotes English agricultural writers, whose 
weights, &c., he has always been at the pains to reduce into their 
corresponding French equivalents. Not having at all times the 
works referred to at command, the Editor was compelled to bring 
back the French weight or measure into the corresponding English 
one by calculation. Thus from not knowing the precise equivalents 
adopted by M. Boussingault, some trivial discrepancy between the 
computed and the original weights, &c., may have resulted ; but as 
the quantities that have been treated in this way are especially im- 
portant as relative, scarcely ever as absolute quantities, the error 
where it occurs can be of no real consequence. Metres, centime- 
tres, and millimetres have been reduced into English feet and inches, 
assuming the metre as equal to 39.370 inches. Finally, and to 
conclude our list of reductions, (would that it had been shorter !) 
the degrees of the centigrade thermometer have been brought into 
degrees of the only scale in familiar use among us, viz. Fahren- 
heit's. 

In the translation the Editor has endeavored (not always with 
perfect success) to be as little technical as possible, with a view to 
the convenience of the general reader. In a very few places he 
has even ventured slightly to condense the style of the original in 
order to keep the volume within moderate dimen3ions, occasionally 
throwing the information contained in a table into the text or nar- 
rative ; and where the Author appeared to him to be forgetting the 
rural economist in the mere chemist, as where for example he de- 
scribes the special modes of preparing and purifying indigo, &c. he 
has made bold to retrench details, and give the results or conclusions 
only. All analyses bearing on the practical subject, whether it was 
the soil that produced, the crop that was grown, or the animal which 
fed on that crop, have been scrupulously retained. In conclusion, 
the reader is earnestly recommended to read an admirable little 
work, the joint production of Messrs. Dumas and Boussingault, en- 
titled in the original, " Essai de Statique Chimique des Etres orga- 
nises," which has been presented in a clear English translation, under 
the title of, " An Essay on the Chemical and Physiological Balance 
of Organic Nature," and may be regarded as a most valuable intro- 
ductory aid to the perfect comprehension of Boussingault's Philoso- 
phy of Agriculture, and as a key to the more scientific and technical 
portions of the work now submitted to the public. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Page 
Physical PHENOMENA of vegetation. — vegetable physiology 13 

$ II. — Chemical phenomena of vegetation 25 

Germination 26 

Germination of wheat 29 

Continued germination of peas 30 

Continued germination of wheat 31 

$ III. -Evolution and growth of plants 33 

Experiment I. — Growth of Red Clover during three months 44 

Experiment II. — Growth of peas 45 

Experiment III. — Growth of wheat 46 

Experiment IV. — Growth of clover . 47 

e Experiment V. — Vegetation of oats 48 

§ IV. — Of the inorganic matters contained in plants — their origin — of the chemical 

nature of sap 52 

Quantity of ashes contained in the diflerent parts of vegetables, according 

to M. de Saussure 53 

Composition of the substances found by M. de Saussure 55 

Alkaline salts and insoluble substances contained in ashes 56 

Alkaline salts and insoluble substances of ashes, according to M. Berthier- • 57 

Composition of the ashes of several plants analyzed by M. Berthier 58 

Sap of the Batnbusa Guaduas 68 

Sap of the banana plant {Musa Paradisica) 68 

Milky saps 1 69 

Sap of the papaw-tree {Carica Papaya) 69 

Sap of the cow-tree 69 

Milky sap of the Hura Crepitans (Ajuapar) . . •■• 71 

Milky sap of the poppy (Opium) 71 

Milk of the Plumeria Americana 72 

Sap of the caoutchouc-tree 72 

Gummy and resinous saps 73 

Saccharine saps 74 

CHAPTER n. 
Of the chemical constitution of vegetable substances 75 

^ I. — duarternary azotized principles of vegetables 76 

Composition of legumine obtained from diflerent seeds 78 

$ II. — Proximate principles with a ternary composition ; of starch 80 

Inuline 87 

Of woody matter and cellular tissue ,,. 87 

Density of diflerent kinds of wood, according to Brisson 90 

Of sugar 114 

Beet-root sugar 121 

Palm sugar 126 

Grape sugar 126 

Saccharine principles not fermentable 128 

Gum ,129 

Vegetable jelly ; pectine and pcctic acid 139 



10 CONTENTS. 

Page 

Of vegetable acids 131 

Of the vegetable alkalies 131 

Of fatty substances 134 

Of essential oils 141 

Of resin 142 

Caoutchouc 143 

Veget;ible wax 143 

Chlorophylle 145 

Of coloring matters 145 

§ III. — Composition of the different parts of plants 154 

Roots and tubers 154 

Barks 161 

Leaves 164 

Seeds 168 

Fleshy or pulpy fruits 189 

CHAPTER III. 

Of the saccharine fruits, juices, and infusions used in the preparation 

OF fermented and spirituous HqUORS 193 

CHAPTER IV. 

Of SOILS 200 

Classification of soils 223 

CHAPTER V. 

Of manures 237 

Excretions of the horse 267 

Excretions of the cow 268 

Excretions of the pig 268 

Animal excrements 285 

Table of the comparative value of manures, deduced from analyses made 
by Messrs. Payen and Boussingault 297 

CHAPTER VI. 

Of mineral manures or stimulants , 303 

Calcareous manures 303 

Of alkaline salts 316 

Growth of sainfoin upon soils gypsed and ungypsed in 1792, 1793, and 1794. .321 
Comparative growths of white clover, gj'psed and ungypsed, by Mr. Smith. 322 
Experiment with field-beet or mangel-wurzel, opening the rotation with 

manured soil, 1842 327 

Mineral substances contained in the crop 329 

Of ammoniacal salts 332 

Of water 336 

CHAPTER VII. 

Of the rotation of crops 34J 

$ I. — Of the organic matter of manure and of crops 341 

Potatoes 348 

Wheat 349 

Wheat-straw 349 

Red clover 349 

Turnips 350 

Oats 350 

Oat-straw 351 

Field-beel or mangel-wurzel 351 

Rye 351 

Rye-straw 351 

White pea^ 352 

Pea-straw 352 



CONTENTS. 11 

Page 

Jemsalem potato or artichoke 352 

Dried stems of Jerusalem artichokes 352 

Table of the proportions of water contained in difTerent substances 353 

Composition of the same substances dried in vacuo at 230° F. 353 

Relation of manures to crops • 354 

Desiccation of half-made or half-decayed manure 354 

Experiment I 354 

Experiment II 354 

Experiment III 354 

Analyses of half-made manures 354 

Composition of the manures analyzed 355 

notation course, No. 1 357 

Rotation course, No. 2 357 

Rotation course, No. 3 358 

Rotation course, No. 4 358 

Continuous Jerusalem potato crop, No. 5 358 

Quatrennial rotation, adopted by M. Crud, No. 6 358 

Siunmary 35'J 

^ II. — Of the residues of different crops 360 

Potato tops or hauni 361 

Leaves of (ield-beet or mangel-wturzel 361 

Composition of dry leaves ^ 361 

Wheat stubble 362 

Clover roots 362 

Composition of the roots 362 

Oat stubble 362 

Siunmary of the foregoing results 363 

^ III. — Of the inorganic substances of manures and crops 3S4 

Composition of the ashes proceeding from the plants grown at Bechelbronn 360 
Mineral substances taken up from the soil by the various crops grown at 

Bechelbronn upon one acre , .' 305 

Table of the mineral matters of the crops and manures in the course of a 

rotation 3S9 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Of the feeding of the animals beloncino to a farm ; and of the imme- 
diate PRINCIPLES OF ANIMAL ORIQIN 375 

5 I. — Origin of animal principles 375 

Of the food of animals and feeding 386 

Experiments on the maintenance of horses 400 

Experiment 1 400 

Experiment II. — Introduction of Jerusalem potatoes into the ration 401 

Experiment III.— Ration of hay and potatoes 401 

Experiment IV. — Substitution of oats and straw for a portion of the hay 402 

Experiment V. — Potatoes substituted for a portion of the hay 403 

Experiment VI. — Jerusalem potato for a portion of the hay 403 

Experiment VII. — Introduction of field-beet or mangel-wurzel into the ration 403 
Experiment VIII. — Introduction of the Swedish turnip into the ration and 

replacing a portion of the hay 404 

Experiment IX. — Introduction of carrots into the ration 405 

Experiment X. — Boiled rye as a substitute for oats 405 

Table of the nutritive ecpiivalents of different kinds of forage 407 

^ II. — Of the inorganic constituents of food 4]0 

$ Ill.-r-Of the fatty constituents of forage ; considerations on fattening .416 

CHAPTER IX. 

Or the economy of the animals attached to a farm. — OF stock in general, 

AND ITS relations WITH THE PRODUCTION OF MANURE 428 

$ I —Horned cattle 430 

Table of milch-kinc three years of age und upwards 440 



12 CONTENTS. 

5 II. — Milch-kine 444 

Experiment I. — Two hundred days after calving 447 

Experiment II. — Two hundred and seven days after calving 448 

Experiment III. — Two hundred and fifteen days after calving 448 

Experiment IV. — Two hundred and twenty-nine days after calving 448 

Experiment V. — Two hundred and forty days after calving 449 

Experiment VI. Two hundred and seventy days after calving 449 

Experiment VII. — Two hundred and ninety days after calving 449 

Experiment VIII 449 

Experiment IX. — Thirty-five days after calving 450 

Second Series. Experiment I. — Begun one hundred and seventy-six days 

after the calving 450 

Experiment II. — One hundred and eighty-two days after the calving 450 

Experiment III. — One hundred and ninety-three days after the calving 450 

Experiment IV. — Two hundred and four days after the calving 451 

5 HI. — Fattening of cattle 452 

$ IV.— Of horses 460 

$ v.— Of hogs 464 

$ VI. — Of the production of manure 471 

CHAPTER X. 

Meteorological considerations. 475 

§ I. — Temperature 475 

$ II. — Decrease of temperature in the superior strata of the atmosphere 478 

$ III. — Meteorological circumstances under which certain plants grow in different 

climates 481 

Cultivation of wheat, Alsace 482 

Cultivation of wheat in America 482 

Intertropical region 483 

Cultivation of barley 483 

Culti va tion of maize or Indian corn 484 

Cultivation of the potato 484 

Cultivation of the indigo plant 485 

\i IV. — Cooling through the night; dew, rain 486 

§ V. — On the influence of agricultural labors on the climate of a country in lessen- 
ing streams, &c 495 



RURAL ECONOMY 



CHAPTER I. 

PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF VEGETATION. VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 

The operations of agriculture having for their object the produc- 
tion of plants which are either essential as food, or useful in the arts 
and industrial processes of man, it is well to begin with a summary 
view of the principal organs of which vegetables are composed ; and 
by the instrumentality of which, under certain influences which we 
shall seek to appreciate, all the phenomena of their existence are 
manifested. 

Plants fixed in the soil by their roots, live in the atmosphere by 
the concurrence of their green parts under the combined actions of 
light, heat, and moisture. We shall by and by ascertain at the cost 
of what elements, and under what conditions, their growth and com- 
plete development are accomplished. 

The seed, which is the final result of vegetable life, and of which 
the aim is the reproduction and multiplication of the species, should 
first receive our attention. The seed is, if we may so speak, the 
starting point of all husbandry ; it is with very few exceptions the 
first point on which the industry of the farmer exerts itself. 

Nature, to ensure the preservation of seeds, has had recourse to 
infinite care and foresight, which are in some measure an assurance 
of their importance. The seed is often placed in the middle of an 
abundant fleshy pulp, which serves to afford it nourishment or ma- 
nure at the time of its future development. Sometimes, as in legu- 
minous plants, it is lodged between thick and tough membranes, or 
is covered with hard but flexible scales, as in the gramineous plants ; 
or again it is enveloped in a woody substance of extreme hardness, 
as in stone fruits. 

Nature does not show herself less provident in furnishing means 
for scattering seeds, and propagating vegetable species at great dis- 
tances. There are, indeed, seeds which, furnished with light silky 
plumes or wings, flutter in the air, and are transported afar by the 
winds. Others, by means of a viscous, hard, impermeable envelope, 
float on rivers, and descend their courses without suflTering the slight- 
est change, or losing their germinating power. There are seeds 
again of a sufficiently coherent texture to resist the digestive action 

2 



14 VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 

of the stomachs of animals that feed on the fruits which contain 
them, and which are consequently often found deposited at great 
distances from the plant which produced them> they are thus fre- 
quently dropped to germinate and flourish at the tops of the steepest 
mountains. By these admirable provisions of nature, then, the air, 
the water, and even animals themselves become the vehicles by 
which the migration of various vegetable species over the surface 
of the globe is effected. 

We distinguish in seeds the kernel, and the integument which 
covers or encloses it. In the kernel, the embryo exists, which, as 
its name indicates, is destined to reproduce the plant of which the 
seed is the issue. The embryo is formed of several essential parts : 
— 1st. of the radicle ; 2d. of the gemmule, plumule, or rudiment of 
the stem, which by its extension engenders the organs that are to 
vegetate above the ground ; 3d. of cotyledons, which form the great- 
est portion of the kernel, and which are destined to support the plant 
during the first periods of its existence. 

In most cases, the cotyledons are formed of two lobes which sepa- 
rate during the act of germination. The plumule presents itself 
under the form of a little white point which penetrates into the in- 
terior of both cotyledons. The radicle is of a slightly conical shape, 
and is first seen when it projects externally from the seed. 

The seeds of gramineous plants do not separate into two parts at the 
commencement of their independent existence. They are, in fact, 
seeds which have but a single cotyledon. As plants which spring from 
seeds of one or of more cotyledons present capital differences in 
their organization at large, and mode of development, botanists have 
established two grand divisions among them — into monocotyledonous 
vegetables, and dicotyledonous or polycotyledonous vegetables. 

When the seed is gathered in its state of perfect maturity it is 
completely inert, its vital functions are wholly suspended, and it may 
be kept often for a vei-y long time without being made to grow. 

The length of time during which seeds may be kept, however, 
varies extremely, according to the species. There are plants, for 
instance, the seeds of which preserve for an indefinite period their 
germinative power ; there are others, on the contrary, which lose it 
very speedily. 

From various observations which appear to deserve every con- 
fidence, the seeds — 

Of Tobacco have germinated after having been 

kept for 10 years. 

"Stramonium 2.5 " (Duhaniel.) 

" the Sensitive plant 60 " 

"Wheat 100 " (Pliny.) 

"Wheat 10 " (Duhnmel.) 

"Melons 41 " (Friewald.) 

"Cucumbers 17 " (Roger Galen.) 

"Haricots 33 " 

"Idem 100 " (Gerardin.) 

"Rape 17 " (LefSbure.) 

"Rye 140 " (Home.) 

The seeds of the coffee plant are perhaps those which lose the 



SEEDS. 15 

property of germinating most speedily ; planters are well aware that 
they must be sown almost immediately after they are taken from 
the bush. Oleaginous seeds are generally preserved with great dif- 
ficulty ; so also are those of rubiaceous plants, of the laurels, myr- 
tles, &c.* 

In practical agriculture there is always much advantage, and 
additional security, in sowing the most recent seed, even of kinds 
which are known to be the longest lived. It frequently happens, 
even after a very short time, that a certain proportion of these seeds 
die : they have, perhaps, not been gathered "under circumstances 
favorable to their complete preservation. It is, therefore, only when 
he is compelled to do so, that the farmer trusts wheat to the ground 
which has been gathered in former years ; and experience has 
proved that in using such seed, it is necessary to increase very con- 
siderably the quantity sown. 

The inactivity of the seed ceases so soon as it is brought into 
contact with water and the air under the influence of a sufficient 
temperature. Sown in moist earth, a seed absorbs water, and swells 
considerably ; the pellicle which covers it becomes distended, and 
ends by bursting ; the radicle and the plumule appear, and become 
more and more distinct ; the root penetrates the ground ; the plu- 
mule by and by grows into a stalk which gets greener and greener, 
increases rapidly, and augments the number of its leaves, so that 
the young plant acquires vigor every day. At a certain period, 
♦lowers appear ; and these are succeeded by fruit, the final term of 
which is the maturity of the seed. The phenomena of vegetation 
then cease. The whole of the organs of annual plants now wither 
and die ; the work of reproduction, of multiplication, is accomplished. 
Thus begins and ends the existence of the plants which are the 
usual subjects of our husbandry. 

With regard to biennial plants and trees, which possess more than 
this ephemeral existence, things pass differently. The plant vege- 
tates so long as the temperature of the atmosphere and moisture of 
the soil are favorable to it : during the cold season the leaves fall, 
and the growth is suspended ; but the plant revives anew on the 
return of spring. Those vegetables, the stem of which is generally 
ligneous, and whose roots penetrate deeply into the ground, have a 
power of resisting cold, and brave the rigors of the winter. In 
these latitudes, the renewal of the vegetation of trees in the spring 
presents an obvious analogy to the process of germination : the evo- 
lution of the buds represents this process very closely ; and the phe- 
nomena at large, which we observe in annual plants, are for the 
major part reproduced : — there is increase of size in the stem and 
root, sprouting of leaves, inflorescence, ripening of fruits, production 
of seeds, and then suspension of function. 

In the tropics, where the temperature is nearly uniform through- 
out the year, vegetation goes on without interruption ; it only varies 
in its vigor, and this is determined by the abundance or the paucity 

» 

* Decandolle, riiysiolosy, pngc G-22. 



16 VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 

of rains and dews. The leaves which have concurred in the pro- 
duction of the fruit, and in perfecting the seed, fall as it were ex- 
hausted ; but they are soon replaced, and their fall is only perceived 
by. their presence on the surface of the ground. 

The perfect plant, therefore, whether it be studied among annuals, 
or among trees that endure for a century, has analogous organs, 
destined to fulfil the same functions, to conduce to the same end — 
the reproduction of the seed. These organs, which we shall study 
in succession, are, 1st. The roots ; 2d. The stem ; 3d. The leaves ; 
4th. The appendages of the fructification. 

When we follow the progress of a seed set in a proper soil, we 
observe that from their very first appearance the roots seek or tend 
towards the interior of the earth ; the plumule, or young stem, on the 
contrary, takes a direction diametrically opposite ; it grows verti- 
cally and seeks the air. 

The lateral shoots in herbaceous plants, and the young branches 
of shrubs, form various angles with the principal stem or trunk. The 
first tendency of the branches is to rise vertically ; but as they gain 
length and weight, they bend more or less downward, yielding to the 
power of gravitation. Mr. Knight showed, by a series of ingenious 
experiments, that the direction taken by the roots and branches is 
mainly due to this force. 

This able observer arranged a wheel of wood in such a way that 
he could make it turn with different velocities in planes variously 
inclined to the horizon. The wheel, which was kept in motion by 
a stream of water, could be made to revolve vertically or horizon- 
tally at will. 

A number of beans were planted upon the circumference of the 
wheel, in circumstances known to be indispensable to their germi- 
nation and growth. By giving the wheel a sufficient velocity, it 
was easy to make the centrifugal force greater than the centripetal 
force. In Mr. Knight's apparatus, this happened when the wheel 
in the vertical plane performed one hundred and fifty revolutions in 
a minute. The whole of the radicles were then seen to turn their 
suckers beyond the circumference in lines which were prolonga- 
tions of the radii of the wheel, and their growth took place in planes 
perpendicular to its axis. 

The stems took a completely opposite direction, and after a time 
their summits attained the centre or axis of the wheel. 

In causing the wheel to revolve in a horizontal plane, the same 
effects were still observed, when the rapidity of rotation was suffi- 
cient to annul the action of terrestrial gravitation. But when the 
motion was so far diminished, as merely to modify or to lessen the force 
of attraction, without entirely annulling it, the plant took a course 
comprised in a plane which formed a certain angle with the circum- 
ference of the wheel. With a certain velocity, the roots were in- 
clined 10° below the horizontal plane in which the wheel moved, and 
the stems then formed an angle of the same magnitude above the same 
plane. The angle of deviation formed in this position of the wheel was 
always smaller in proportion as the rapidity of rotation was greater. 



STEMS. 17 

Now, since gravitation influences the position which vegetables 
present, as these beautiful experiments of Mr. Knight demonstrate, 
a practical conclusion which seems to follow from the fact is this, 
that the number of plants which may be placed upon a certain e.x:- 
tent of soil, does not depend solely on the extent of surface ; and 
that the power of production of a field which is very much sloped, 
does not exceed its horizontal projection. With regard to creeping 
plants, and with reference to meadows, it is clear that this principle 
is not rigorously exact : but in so far as plants with isolated stems 
are concerned, many agricultural philosophers, and among the num- 
ber Davy,* have admitted it as perfectly indisputable. This opinion, 
as M. Corrardf has judiciously observed, is founded on the geome- 
trical yrinciple, which in itself is perfectly true, that an inclined 
plane cannot be cut by a greater number of vertical perpendiculars 
of a determinate thickness, than the horizontal plane which serves it 
for a base. Thus, says Corrard, as buildings which rest on an in- 
clined plane are raised perpendicularly to the horizon, it has been 
concluded that an inclined plane can hold no larger an extent of 
building than would the horizontal plane which it covers ; so that 
inclinations of surface do not actually add to the extent of towns. It 
is further a matter of absolute certainty, that as rain falls vertically, 
the quantity of water collected upon the eaves of a house is precisely 
the same as that which would be gauged in the same place upon a 
horizontal surface, equal to that of the building. But we should 
very much deceive ourselves, adds Corrard, if upon the same prin- 
ciple we inferred that on the surface of an inclined plane we could 
not have a tree more than upon the much smaller horizontal plane 
which serves as its base. 

For although plants grow perpendicularly to the horizon, and may 
in this respect be considered as so many vertical perpendiculars or 
laminae, still, from circumstances which are peculiar to them, we 
cannot here apply with propriety the geometrical principle in ques- 
tion. Because, to make the application exact, it were necessary to 
suppose that plants required no space around them to thrive, and that 
the whole surface of the ground might be covered with their stems 
without any space being left between them, and without this prox- 
imity interfering with their growth and vigor. 

But such a supposition is impossible, inasmuch as it is absolutely 
necessary that plants should have a certain amount of space, both in 
the ground and in the atmosphere, in which to extend their roots 
and stretch forth their branches. Supposing, therefore, the inclined 
plane to be of considerably greater extent than the horizontal plane 
which supports it, it will necessarily afford to a larger number of 
plants, the spaces which their roots require for their growth and 
nourishment. In other words, upon the inclined surface there will , 
be a larger quantity of vegetable earth, and more of the nutritious 
juices favorable to vegetation ; and for these reasons the space which 

* Agricultural Chemistry, vol. i. 

t B. Corrard, Verhandel. von der Maatsch. te Haarlem, vol. xv. p. 308. 
2* 



18 VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGV. 

must always exist between plants may be less than on the horizontal 
plane. Consequently, all the conditions necessary to fertility being 
assumed as equal, the inclined plane will be capable of supporting 
a larger number of vegetables having vertical stems than the hori- 
zontal plane. 

The organization of different parts of plants, so worthy in all 
respects of exercising the sagacity of physiologists, need not be 
made a subject of minute research in this place. Generalities suf- 
fice in our agricultural science. This organization, however com- 
plex it is in appearance, is probably much more simple than is 
usually believed ; we might perchance find the proof of this sim- 
plicity in the readiness with which organs, the most dissimilar in 
their external forms and so different in their functions, undergo 
modification and transformation one into another, it might almost be 
said at the will of the observer. Thus tubers, those fleshy amyla- 
ceous bodies, which accumulate on the subterranean stems of cer- 
tain vegetables, such as the potato, give birth to a plant which differs 
in nothing from that which would arise from the seed of the same 
vegetable. Certain leaves, — those of the orange, of the ficus elas- 
tica, &c., will do the same. Woody stems, branches severed from 
the tree and planted in the ground, produce roots and become inde- 
pendent plants. If the branches of certain shrubs be buried, and 
their roots be exposed to the air, these last are soon seen covered 
with buds and leaves ; while the buried branches acquire a fibrous 
capillary structure, and in no great length of time they both present 
the appearance and exercise the functions of roots. This singular 
mutation readily succeeds with the willow, and it was upon this plant 
that the English vegetable physiologist, Woodward, effected it for 
the first time.* 

The intimate structure of the roots, trunk, and branches, present 
considerable similarity. . Divided perpendicularly to their longitudinal 
axis, three different zones, so dissimilar that it is impossible to con- 
found them, are discovered in the different concentric layers which 
make up their mass ; these are the bark, the wood, and the pith. 
A more careful examination shows that each of these zones may be 
further subdivided. 

The exterior of the bark is covered by an extremely thin, nearly 
transparent and porous pellicle, formed by an assemblage of little 
adherent scales; this is the cuticle, or epidermis, which encloses the 
entire vegetable. As it is extensible within certain narrow limits 
only, it gives way and cracks in proportion as the body of the tree 
increases in size. The pores of the epidermis are minute openings 
or mouths which communicate with the exterior by an oval orifice, 
surrounded by a kind of contractile margin. It has been remarked 
that moisture tends to close these pores, and tliat drought and the 
action of solar light tend on the contrary to make them open. The 
chemical nature of the cuticle which covers the bark appears to in- 
dicate that it is destined to defend the plant against the too direct 

* Davy's Agricultural Chemistry. 



BARK. 19 

action of external influences. In certain trees, the cuticle is covered 
with wax or resin. The most remarkable example of this kind, 
which can be quoted, is that of the wax-tree (ceroxilon andicola) 
which glows abundantly upon the slopes of the Andes. This tree, 
(a palm,) which attains a height of between 130 and 164 English 
feet, is covered over the whole surface of its trunk with a mixture 
of wax and resin.* In gramineous plants, the epidermis is almost 
entirely formed of silica. The bark of the birch-tree is covered 
with a pellicle of an unctuous nature, capable under the agency of 
nitric acid of yielding a peculiar suberic (the) acid.f 

After the epidermis, in going from the circumference towards the 
centre, a layer of cellular tissue appears, which is designated by 
many physiologists under the name of the herbaceous envelope. In 
the cork oak, the cork represents the tissue by which the liber or 
true bark is covered, an organ formed of a vascular tissue, which 
with care can be separated into numerous very thin flakes or layers, 
which have been aptly compared to the leaves of a book. 

The origin of the liber, or bark, is found in the most central part 
of the trunk ; it is the result of the exudation of the woody parts, as 
Duhamel, with the same wonderful sagacity which characterizes all 
his works, has proved. Having cut away a portion of the bark of 
a tree in full vigor, and taken care to preserve the incision from 
contact with the air, he perceived that from the surface of the wood 
laid bare, and the edges of the bark adhering to it, a viscous mat- 
ter exudes, which accumulates, acquires consistency, and ends by 
becoming cellular, thus regenerating the liber which had been taken 
away. Grew called this viscous secretion cambium, a title which it 
still retains. It is now generally admitted that cambium proceeds 
from the descending sap. 

The liber is a very important organ in vegetables ; we know 
for instance that it is necessary for the success of a graft that its 
liber penetrate or be penetrated by that of the tree on which it is 
grafted. 

The woody layers are situated under the liber. Those which arc 
at the greatest distance from the axis of the trunk, although they 
present the fibrous structure, and the principal characteristics of the 
woody tissue, still differ from it in being less hard and less tena- 
cious ; this zone, which at the first glance is easily distinguished 
from the wood properly so called, is the alburnum, the soft or false 
wood. Its fibres are much looser, and its color paler than that of 
the wood beneath it, the difference of shade being particularly ap- 
parent in the dya and deeply colored woods. 

The alburnum becomes harder and tougher with age, and passes 
into the woody tissue, the duramen or hard wood, properly so called. 
The wood begins where the alburnum terminates, and reaches to 
the centre, to the piLh or medullary canal. 

In dicotyledonous trees, a certain quantity of wood is formed 

* Boussingault, sur le Palmier a.circ. Annales de Chiinie et de Fhysinue, 2= s6rie, 
t. 59, p. 19. 

t From the observations of M. Chevreul. 



20 VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 

during vegetation at the expense of the alburnum ; while on the 
opposite side towards the bark, the alburnum increases in about an 
equal proportion : so that in our climates, the alburnum grows each 
year from a new concentric layer ; but in tropical countries, where 
the dicotyledonous trees vegetate without interruption, the annual 
concentric layers are scarcely perceptible. To prove the conver- 
sion of alburnum into woody tissue, Duhamel inserted a metallic 
wire into it in several places. At the end of a few years he found 
that the wire had become engaged in the proper woody layers. 

The most central zone of the trunk or stem is traversed by the 
medullary canal or sheath, which is usually filled with the pith, a 
diaphanous spongy matter, consisting almost entirely of cellular 
tissue. 

The pith sends ramifications towards the external parts of the 
trunk. Its use is not exactly determined ; and notwithstanding the 
high purposes ascribed to it by some physiologists, we have many 
reasons for believing that its functions are not of great importance. 
Experiment proves, in fact, that the pith may be removed from 
young trees without killing them, without even stopping their 
growth. One of the least unquestionable offices assigned to the 
pith, is that of its being a reservoir for moisture with which it sup- 
plies the plant in times of drought, and when the ground does not 
furnish a sufficient quantity of water. 

The internal structure and progressive development of the stem 
of monocotyledonous plants differ essentially from those which 
we have just been describing in connection with dicotyledonous 
plants. 

If a perpendicular transverse section of the trunk of a palm-tree 
be examined, the same arrangement of zones which is observed in 
the dicotyledonous plants of our climates will not be perceived. 
The regions of the outer bark, of the liber or true bark, of the al- 
burnum, and of the wood, forming so many concentric circles round 
a canal which is their common centre, are no longer distinguishable. 
The trunk of the palm-tree presents a more homogeneous appearance. 
The pith is disposed through the whole substance of the stem, and 
the woody tissue, presenting a fibrous texture disposed longitudinal- 
ly, is found intimately mixed, or felted, as it were, with the medul- 
lary substance. The bark, if there be any, is always very indis- 
tinct ; sometimes reduced to a simple epidermis, it is with difficulty 
distinguished from other parts of the trunk. In the beginning, and 
when it first appears above the ground, a palm-tree puts forth a sys- 
tem of leaves, the adhering extremities of which are attached in the 
same plane, and usually surround the neck of the root. At the 
second shoot, a system similar to the preceding one appears, which 
throws off the outside leaves, and interrupts their power of vege- 
tating. These leaves wither, bend towards the earth and fall off, 
leaving a projecting circular ring on the stem, the only vestige of 
their existence. The same phenomenon takes place periodically. 
In the centre of the crown of leaves or branches, which terminates 
the palm-tree plant, a bud appears which is at first small and blanch- 



PALMS. 21 

ed ;* but soon displays the most vigorous powers of vegetation. Its 
growth, inflorescence, and progress towards maturity are indicated 
by the decay and fall of the leaves which had hitherto protected it. 
The age of a palm-tree, or rather the number of times that it has 
fructified, or become crowned with fresh leaves, is calculated by the 
number of woody circles which are found marked on the stem. Its 
power of lasting seems to have no other limits than the resistance 
which the base offers to the weight it supports. In these colossal 
trees, a sensible diminution in the diameter of the stem is often per- 
ceptible towards the top, and in most of the species it is a fact 
equally well proved, that the fruit decreases in quantity when they 
have attained a certain epoch of their existence. In the cocoa-nut 
tree (lodicea cocus nucifera) the period of this decrease shows itself 
at about the age of thirty years, although this tree continues to bear 
for nearly a century. f 

The leaves, the forms of which are so various, present however 
the greatest analogy in their organization : the green membranous 
substance of which they are almost entirely composed, is an exten- 
sion of the parenchyma ; the envelope which covers them answers 
to the epidermis. 

It is in the leaves that the sap is subjected to the action of the 
atmosphere ; it is there concentrated and peculiarly modified. Ac- 
cording to the position of leaves upon the plant, their under sides, 
or those turned towards the ground, are distinguished from their 
upper sides which meet the light from above. 

The upper side of the leaf is covered with a thick and frequently 
shining epidermis ; this epidermis is sometimes endued with a sub- 
stance rich in silicious matter, as in rushes. In the Steppes of 
South America I observed a tree, called Chapparal, the leaves of 
which are so highly silicious, that they are used for polishing metals. 
Generally speaking, the covering of the upper surface of leaves is a 
matter which is something of the nature of wax or resin. The 
epidermis which covers the lower surface is formed in most cases 
of a very thin, rough membrane, full of cavities and frequently cov- 
ered with hairs or down. 

The appearance and position of the leaves are not the same du- 
ring the day and night. In the dark, simple leaves incline to fold 
up ; in compound leaves, as in those of the acacia and sensitive 
plant, the same thing is still more marked ; the effect can even be 
produced at will. If during the day a sensitive plant is placed in a 
dark room, the leaves immediately close ; on lighting the room even 
with candles, they open again as if under the influence of the solar 
light ;J Linnaeus, who first paid attention to this class of phenome- 
na, admits that plants in the absence of light experience a sort of 
sleep. 

* This bud, in certain species of palm-trees, is sought after as food, and is often 
spoken of as the cabbage of the palm-tree. 

t Information cnmmunicated by Mr. Codazzi. The trunk of certain species of palm- 
trees shows an enlargement towards the middle of its height, as in the palma barrigona 
of Choco. 

X Observ-ation of M. dc CandoUe. 



22 VEGETABLE PHVSIOLOGY. 

The flower is the forerunner of the fruit, tlie fruit is the medium 
in the heart of which the seed is developed. The organs which 
constitute the flower are the calyx and the corolla, destined to sup- 
port, nourish, and protect the pistil and the stamina, which are the 
essential parts ; the calyx is a green membrane which surrounds the 
corolla, and in certain flowers replaces it. 

The corolla is monopetalous or polypetalous according as it is com- 
posed of one or of several pieces. The stamens occupy the interioi 
of the corolla ; they are terminated by summits of a vascular tex- 
ture ; these are the anthers ; the powder which covers and sticks 
slightly to them is designated under the name of pollen. 

The pistil placed in the middle of the flower is composed of the 
ovary, the style, and the stigma. 

The ovary encloses the germ, the embryo of the seed ; but this 
embryo is only developed by the action of the pollen. The style is 
in some sort the tubular prolongation of the ovary ; it supports the 
stigma, which is tiie glandular part that receives the fecundating 
influence of the pollen. 

From what has now been said, the pistil may be considered as the 
female organ of the flower, the stamens as the male organs. 

Many flowers combine the organs of the two sexes. These flow- 
ers are hermaphrodites ; those which only contain one organ, are 
called unisexual. Both male and female flowers are produced to- 
gether on certain plants ; in others, the flowers are all only of one 
sex, male or female. Polygamous plants are those which show a 
union of male and female flowers, or which have hermaphrodite 
flowers on the same stem. 

In some flowers, the sexual organs at the period of fecundation 
acquire the property of motion, so as to facilitate this grand act. 
The stamens, for example, are seen in certain plants to approach 
the stigma, to deposite their pollen on it, and then to withdraw. It 
occasionally happens again that stamens, which are at first naturally 
in a position inclined with reference to the pistil, become suddenly 
straightened in such a way as to cast their pollen on the female or- 
gan, after which they resume their original position. In certain 
flowers a very considerable evolution of caloric has been perceived 
on the approach of the period of fecundation. In some arums, for 
example, the temperature has been observed to rise to 40° and even 
50° cent. (104° to 122° P^ahr.) It is probable that this phenomenon 
is quite general, and that it only varies in point of intensity. 

Fecundation accomplished, the office of the flower is at an end. 
It collapses, withers, and dies. But the impregnated ovary enlarges 
by degrees, until it has attained maturity, when it presents two dis- 
tinct parts, which by their union compose the fruit : these parts are 
the pericarp, and the seed — the husk or shell and the grain. The 
pericarp always surrounds the seed ; but it sometimes happens that 
it is so thin and delicate that it blends with the seed. 

The germination of seeds, the evolution of new plants, is only 
accomplished under certain physical conditions which demand our 
consideration. 



ROOTS, SAP. 23 

We have already said incidentally, that in order that a seed may 
germinate, it must be in contact with moisture, have communication 
witli the air, and be under the influence of a certain temperature. 
The same conditions continue to be indispensable after the seed has 
sprung, and the plant has been organized ; and in addition the access 
of light is now imperative. 

Roots seek in the soil the moisture which is requisite to vivify 
the whole vegetable. These organs are terminated by hair-like 
fibres of extreme delicacy, and having spongioles at their extremities : 
it is by these spongioles that absorption is effected. The following 
experiment is sufficient to prove that this is the case : let such a 
plant as a turnip be placed with the hair-like extremities of its root 
plunged in water, and the plant will continue to live, although almost 
the whole body of the root is in the air ; let things be now so ar- 
ranged that the hair-like filaments of the root are not in the water, 
but that the bulb or body of the plant is so : the leaves will soon 
droop and wither. 

The force which brings into play the suction power of the roots, 
resides in almost every part of the plant : thus a root deprived of 
its spongioles, a stem, a branch, and a leaf, exert this suction power 
when plunged in water. But the absorption effected in this way 
has a limit, and we soon discover the necessity of making fresh 
sections of the extremities, which have no power of renovation like 
the filaments furnished with spongioles, which terminate a root. 

We are still ignorant of the cause which produces the ascent of 
liquids in vegetables, and which carries them to the remotest leaves, 
in spite as it were of the laws of hydrostatics. We readily conceive 
how the spongioles of the roots, surrounded by earth abundantly 
charged with moisture, should imbibe by the simple effect of poro- 
sity. We can also understand how, after having been modified by 
the spongioles, the water and the principles contained in it should 
be transformed into sap ; but the porosity of the extremities of the 
roots, and the chemical modification effected by the spongioles upon 
the fluid imbibed, give no kind of explanation of the rapid ascent of 
the sap. The force which occasions this rise is very considerable, 
as was demonstrated by Dr. Stephen Hales in a series of ingenious 
experiments more than a century ago. 

Hales adapted a tube bent at a right angle and filled with water, 
to the extremity of the root of a pear-tree, the point of which had 
been cut off; the extremity of the tube opposite to that which was 
connected with the root dipped into a bath of mercury. In a few 
minutes a portion of the water contained in the tube was absorbed, 
and the mercury rose above the surface of the bath to the extent of 
eight inches. In the beginning of April, Hales cut off a vine stem 
at the distance of thirty-three inches from the ground. The stem 
had no lateral branches, and its cut surface, which was nearly cir- 
cular, had a diameter of ^ths of an inch. To this section, he adapt- 
ed a reversed syphon : and things being so disposed, he poured in a 
quantity of mercury, which after a time, and from the effect of the 
pressure exerted by the sap as it escaped, rose in one of the arms 



24 VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 

of the syphon, and remained stationary at the height of thirty-eight 
inches above its original level. This column of mercury, it is 
obvious, represents a pressure very much greater than that of our 
atmosphere. 

The ascent of the sap in trees takes place by the woody layers. 
It is easy to obtain conviction of this by making a plant absorb a 
watery solution of cochineal. By making sections in the stem at. 
different heights, we can readily trace the colored liquid in its pro- 
gress ; it is undoubtedly the course which the natural sap would 
have taken. We see no indication of the coloring matter in the pith 
nor in the bark, the woody tissue alone is colored, sometimes en- 
tirely, but more generally in its younger parts only. The dyeing 
which results from this injection of the wood is in lines, and parallel 
with the axis of the trunk, like the woody fibres themselves ; but 
in some cases the sap may deviate from the rectilinear course. 
Hales showed this by the following experiment : upon a tree he 
made four notches, one above the other ; each notch occupied one 
quarter of the trunk and reached to its centre. In this way the 
whole of the woody fibres were cut through at different heights, so 
that to continue its ascent the sap must necessarily experience a 
series of lateral deviation, which in fact took place. 

The ascending sap of vegetables, as it has hitherto been procured 
for examination, is an extremely watery fluid, holding in solution 
very small quantities of divers saline and organic substances. 
Having attained the leaves, the sap there undergoes modification, 
and becomes concentrated by losing water. It at the same time 
experiences, through the agency of the atmospheric air, under the 
influence of light, a great modification in its constitution. Thus 
elaborated, the sap takes a descending course ; follovi'ing the liher, 
it retrogrades towards the soil, and therefore performs a kind of cir- 
culation in its passage through the plant. The descending course 
of the sap is demonstrated by throwing a ligature round the trunk 
of a tree ; after a time there is formed, above the part that is tied, 
an enlargement which is owing to the accumulation of the principles 
of the sap ; but below it the tree experiences no increase. The 
descending course of the elaborated sap is no effect of simple gravi- 
ty ; because, if the ligature be thrown around a pendent branch, the 
enlargement still forms between the ligature and the free extremity 
of the branch. The descending sap passing through the cortical 
layers must necessarily contribute to their formation ; and it is 
almost certain, as appears from the capital experiment of Duhamel, 
that it is the cambium which is changed into liber, and so concurs in 
the growth of trees. The concentration of the ascending sap, which 
occurs during its passage through the leaves, by the simple effect 
of evaporation, is the phenomenon which is spoken of under the 
name of the exhalation of plants : this exhalation of plants, it is 
easily understood, is favored by a high temperature, dryness, and 
motion of the air. In favorable circumstances, the water escapes 
in the state of vapor. Hales compared the watery exhalation of 
olants to the perspiration of animals, and made many experiments 



EXHALATION. 25 

to ascertain the quantity of watery vapor which they usually throw 
off. 

Hales planted a sun-flower in an air-tight vessel, the top of which 
was sealed hermetically by a leaden cover. This cover was pierced 
by two holes : one for the passage of the stem of the plant, the other 
for the introduction of the water necessary to its growth. For a 
fortnight the apparatus was regularly weighed, and our ingenious 
experimenter found that the green parts of the sun-flower threw off 
on an average about twenty ounces of water in twelve hours of the 
day. The evaporation was always increased during dry and warm 
weather ; moist air lessened it ; during the night season, the evapo- 
ration was sometimes no more than tliree ounces, and it occasional- 
ly happened that it was nil. 

Vegetable life appears to be intimately connected with the pheno- 
menon of evaporation. From the inquiries which I have myself 
undertaken on this subject, so well deserving the attention of obser- 
vers, it would appear that a plant grows only when it transpires, and 
that in hindering this transpiration, we in fact arrest vegetation. 

We now associate with the phenomenon of exhalation the source 
or accumulation of certain substances which are met with in con- 
siderable quantity in the organization of plants, although scarcely a 
trace of them can be detected in the water with which they are sup- 
plied. The water evaporating, leaves these substances behind ; and 
as the mass of liquid imbibed by the roots and exhaled by the green 
parts is very considerable, it is easy to conceive how they should 
finally come to be present in rather large quantity. 

A portion of the water which a plant in full vigor absorbs, must 
necessarily enter into its constitution ; the water exhaled by the 
leaves, therefore, cannot equal the whole of that which has been 
absorbed by the roots. Sennebier endeavored to ascertain the rela- 
tion which exists between the absorption and the exhalation, and he 
found in the particular case which he observed, that about ^ of the 
water absorbed was fixed, and became a constituent part of the 
vegetable. 



§ II.— CHEMICAL PHENOMENA OF VEGETATION. 

The chemical phenomena of vegetation are accomplished by the 
concurrence of the elements of the atmosphere, of water, and of 
certain organic substances which exist as constituents of the soil. 

The action of the atmosphere upon plants presents two phases 
perfectly distinct from one another ; germination, and vegetation 
properly so called, which last comprises the development, the growth, 
and the multiplication of species. 

•J. 



26 CHEMICAL PHENOMENA OP VEGETATION. 



GERMINATION. 

We have ascertained that a seed, considered with reference to it3 
organization, consists, 1st. of an embryo which includes the germs 
of the root and of the stem ; and 2d. of the cotyledon, or cotyledons. 
Considered with reference to their chemical compositions, seeds ex- 
hibit a certain similarity of constitution. They contain : 1st. starch 
and gum ; 2d. a highly azotized matter analogous to the caseum of 
milk and animal albumen ; this is the matter which is commonly and 
very improperly designated under the name of gluten, and of vegeta- 
ble albumen ; 3d. a fatty or oily matter, rich in carbon and hydrogen. 
Seeds contain either fixed oils, such as hemp-seed, rape-seed, &c., 
or volatile oils, as aniseed, cummin-seed, &c. The different prin- 
ciples which are associated in the seeds vary considerably in their 
relative proportions : they also vary slightly in their nature. One 
seed, that of the colewort, for example, will contain more than forty 
per cent, of its weight of oily matter, while another, such as wheat, 
will only contain a few hundredths. Oats may contain ten or twelve 
per cent, of caseum or gluten ; in certain varieties of wheat, 
analysis indicates a much larger quantity. The proportions of starch, 
gum, sugar, or mucilage do not vary less. It almost always hap- 
pens that these different substances are found associated in the same 
seed ; sometimes one predominates and the others only enter in very 
small proportion. 

After burning, the ashes of seeds are always found composed of 
phosphates, sulphates, and alkaline and earthy chlorides. These 
ashes also contain silica, and certain carbonates produced by the 
destruction of salts formed by organic acids. 

If some seeds, sufficiently moistened, are placed under a bell- 
glass containing atmospheric air confined over quicksilver, all the 
signs of germination will soon be perceived. In the course of a few 
days, provided the temperature has been sufficiently high, germina- 
tion will have made a certain progress. Supposing that the tem- 
perature of the bell-glass has not varied, and that the atmospheric 
pressure remains the same, we generally find that the air, in which 
germination has been proceeding, has not changed its original vol- 
ume ; but it has been modified in its composition : a notable quantity 
of carbonic acid has been formed, and a portion of oxygen has dis- 
appeared. The volume of carbonic acid produced, represents for the 
most part the volume of oxygen which has disappeared. Now we 
know that carbon being burnt in a certain volume of oxygen gas, 
produces sensibly an equal volume of carbonic acid gas. It was the 
knowledge of this fact that induced M. de Saussure to say, that in 
germination, carbonic acid is produced by the combustion of a por- 
tion of the carbon which enters into the composition of the seed. 

Germination and the appearance of carbonic acid, (which is al- 
ways its consequence,) take place as readily in pure oxygen gas, as 
in atmospheric air ; but if placed in an atmosphere deprived of oxy- 
gen, seeds cease to germinate. Consequently, germination is out of 
the question in azote, in hydrogen, or in carbonic acid, however fa- 



GERMINATION. 27 

vorable they may be in reference to humidity and temperature. 
Some formation of carbonic acid is indeed to be observed under 
such circumstances, but then this gas is the result of the decompo- 
sition and putrid fermentation of the seed. It is therefore by means 
of the oxygen which it contains, that atmospheric air concurs in tlie 
germination of seeds. 

Rolio was the first who ascertained the production of carbonic acid, 
during the germination of seeds in an atmosphere of oxygen ; but it 
was M. Theodore de Saussure, who by delicate eudiometrical ex- 
periments, demonstrated the phenomena in all their nicety, by prov- 
ing that the oxygen consumed was replaced by a corresponding 
vohime of carbonic acid.* 

There are some seeds, for instance, peas, and the seeds of aquatic 
plants, which have the property of germinating under water. Some 
observei-s have, from this fact, come to the premature conclusion that 
atmospheric air, and consequently oxygen, were by no means neces- 
sary to germination. Saussure has explained this anomaly by re- 
ferring to the constant presence of air in a state of solution in water. 
In fact, having placed some seeds of the polygonum amphibium under 
water, deprived of its air by long boiling, Saussure proved that ger- 
mination could not take place. f 

Under like circumstances, the quantity of carbonic acid generated 
in a given time, is by so much greater, the larger the quantity of 
oxygen in the atmosphere which immediately surrounds the ger- 
minating seed. Carbonic acid gas is, of all the gases which have 
been tried, that which is most unfavorable to germination ; and one 
way of hastening the process is to place under the receivers which 
cover the seed, some substance capable of absorbing it as fast as it is 
formed — quick-lime, for example. By this arrangement the radic- 
ular increase is sensibly accelerated. J 

The quantity of oxygen gas necessary to germination, is not the 
same in reference to all seeds ; lettuce, the french-bean, and the 
field-bean require about yj-oth part of their respective weights ; while 
y„th less is sufficient for wheat, barley, purslane, &c. Saussure 
moreover came to the conclusion that the carbonic acid generated 
by these different seeds in germinating is proportioned to their mass, 
and altogether independent of their number.^ 

Inasmuch as seeds during germination yield carbonic acid to the 
atmosphere, it is quite obvious that they must lose some part of their 
original weight. And this they do in j'act ; but the loss experienced 
by seeds which have germinated is always greater than that which 
would have resulted from the destruction of carbon that takes place. 
Saussure attributed this excess of loss to the volatilization of a por- 
tion of the water which entered into the composition of the seed.|| 
According to Saussure, therefore, the phenomena of germination 
resolve themselves into the diminution of carbon and of the elements 
of water. It is, nevertheless, doubtful whether the chemical actions 

* Saussure, Recherches chimiques sur la V6g6tation, p. 10. 

\ Idem, p. 3. J Idem, p. 26. ^ Idem, p. 13. 1| Idem, p. 20. 



28 CHEMICAL PHENOMENA, ETC. 

are so simple as this ; we know, for example, that M. Becquerel 
considered the organic acid which appears during germination as 
acetic acid, whereas it is much more likely that it should be the 
lactic acid. There is certainty of the formation of an acid during 
germination ; to prove its development it is sufficient to make a few 
moist seeds sprout on blue litmus paper, which speedily acquires 
the permanent red tint indicating the presence of an acid. 

The volume of the air in which seeds germinate is not absolutely 
invariable. On examining, with renewed attention, the action of 
germinating seeds on a limited volume of air, M. de Saussure as- 
certained that certain seeds have the property of diminishing the 
bulk of this atmosphere, while others perceptibly augment it. It 
must be admitted, therefore, that during germination, the volume of 
carbonic acid produced is now greater, now less, than the volume of 
oxygen gas that is consumed. The nature of the results obtained 
appears, however, to vary in regard to the same class according to 
the stage of the germination. 

Elementary analysis appeared to me the most satisfactory means 
of investigating the subject of germination. I shall here recapitu- 
late a few attempts that have been made in this direction, less how- 
ever with a view to the final settlement of the question, than to point 
out the general method of procedure to those who would enter far- 
ther upon this interesting portion of physiology. The experiments 
I allude to were made upon the seed of trefoil and on wheat. 

The seed, on being dried at a heat of 110° cent. (230° Fahr.,) lost 
0.120 of water. Duly moistened, it was placed to sprout on a por- 
celain plate. As soon as the radicle had attained a length of from 
4'jth to -g^oth of an inch, each seed was placed in a stove, the temera- 
ture of which was sufficiently high to check the growth immediately. 
The complete desiccation was then terminated over an oil bath at a 
temperature of 110° cent. (230° Fahr.) 

The seed put to germinate weighed 2.474 grammes, (38. 193 grains 
troy;) perfectly dry, its weight would have been 2.405 grms. (37.128 
grains troy.) When germinated, the seed, also quite dry, weighed 
2.241 grms. (34.596 grains troy.) 

Analysis gives us the composition of 

THE SEED BEFORE GERMINATION. THE SEED AFTER GERMINATION. 

Carbon 51.5 50.8 

.Hydrogen 6.0 6.3 

Azote 7.2 8.0 

Oxygen ••• 36.0 34.2 

100.0 100.0 

RESULTS OF EXPERIMENT. 

Grains troy. Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Aioie, 

Peed placed to germinate 37.128 containing 18.865 2.223 13.369 2.670 

Seed after germinatio n 34.596 " 17.815 2.176 11.840 2.763 

Difference —2.532 " —1.050 —.047 —1.529 +.093 

The total loss then during germination was 0.164 grm., (2.531 grs.) 
while the loss due to the carbon, only amounts to 0.068 grm. (1.049 



GERMINATION. 29 

grs. :) the analysis shows besides that in this particular case, the 
excess of the loss in the present case over and above that which is 
ascribed to the carbon, is not altogether due to the elements of water, 
inasmuch as it is partly ascribable to carbonic oxide : for 

1.049 grs. of carbon, 
1.404 " of oxygen, 



Represent 2.453 " of oside of carbon. 

Supposing this to be so, and the first period of the germination of 
the trefoil to have been conducted in a close vessel, the volume of 
atmospheric air would have been increased ; because 1 volume of 
carbonic oxide-fi volume of oxygen— 1 volume of carbonic acid gas. 
It is consequently evident that for each volume of carbonic oxide 
produced from the seed, there is one half of this volume added to 
the total volume of the atmosphere. 

It will not, perhaps, be useless to advert to the circumstance that 
the increase of volume, which in the experiment I have just related 
must have amounted to about twenty-five cubic inches, would cer- 
tainly have passed undetected, if the experiment had been conducted 
in a close vessel. For inasmuch as several quarts of atmospheric 
air must have been used to place 38.193 grs. of seed in conditions 
favorable for germination, it may readily be imagined that the in- 
crease of volume must have been too small a fraction of the total 
mass of air to be appreciated with any certainty. 

GERMINATION OK WHEAT. 

The wheat employed, on being dried, lost 0.652 grain of moisture. 
Thirty-one grains were arranged for germination, which process 
was suspended immediately after the appearance of the radicles. 
The young stalks were hardly visible. The germinated grain looked 
slightly shrivelled : on being crushed, after having been dried, it 
scarcely differed in appearance from ordinary wheat reduced to 
powder, a considerable quantity of starch being still recognisable. 

The wheat, before germinating, taken as dry, and free from ashes, 
weighed 2.439 grms., or 37.653 grs. troy. 

The seed when germinated and gathered, under the same condi- 
tion, weighed 2.365 grms., or 36.510 grs. troy. 

Elementary analysis gives for the composition of — 

WHEAT NOT GERMINATED. GERMINATED WHEAT. 

Carbon 46.6 47-0 

Hydrogen 5-8 5.9 

Azote 3.45 3.7 

Oxygen ■.■44.15 43.4 

100.0 100.0 

RESULTS OF EXPERIMENT. 

Grains troy. Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxyg-en. Azote. 

Wheat placed to germinate 37.653 containing 17.47 2.176 16.56 1.281 
Wheat when germinated 36.510 " 17.15 2.145 15.83 1.343 ^ 

Difference —1.143 •• —0.032 —0.031 —0.073 +0.062 



30 CllEiMlCAL I'HE.NO.MEJNA, KTC. 

0.324 of a grain of carbon 4-0.432 of a grain of oxygen represent 
0.756 of a grain of carbonic oxide ; 0.030 of a grain of hydrogen 
would require 0.247 of a grain of oxygen to form water. Now, the 
oxygen remaining, abstraction made of that which enters into the 
formation of the carbonic oxide is 0.282 of a grain. 

In the first period of its germination, therefore, wheat, like trefoil 
seed, experiences a loss which may in great part be referred to 
elimination of the carbonic oxide. The chemical composition of 
these two kinds of seed at more advanced periods of their germina- 
tion, no longer presents relations so simple. We easily discover 
that carbon continues to be eliminated ; but the loss no longer cor- 
responds with that which the oxygen of the seed ought to suffer, in 
order that the total loss should be represented by a definite compound 
of carbon. The phenomenon, in fact, becomes extremely complex; 
and we can even perceive that it must be so, when we reflect that 
in proportion as the green parts are evolved, a new chemical action 
is set up entirely different from that which takes place in the earliest 
periods of the germination : the green matter of vegetables having, 
as we shall find, the singular faculty of decomposing carbonic acid 
gas, and assimilating its carbon under the agency of light. 

This action of the green matter begins to be manifested long be- 
fore the first phases of germination have entirely ceased ; so that 
during a certain time two opposite forces are at work simultaneously. 
One of these, as we have seen, tends to discharge carbon from the 
seed ; the other tends to accumulate this element within it. So long 
as the first of these forces predominates, the seed loses carbon ; but 
with the appearance of the green matter the young plant recovers 
a portion of this principle ; finally, when by the progress of the vege- 
tation, the second force surpasses the first in energy, the plant grows, 
increases, and advances to maturity. 

The presence of light is indispensable to the manifestation of the 
chemical force by which the green parts of plants appropriate the 
gaseous elements of the atmosphere. Germination, on the contra- 
ry, may take place in absolute darkness ; and it would be curious to 
inquire into the issues of vegetation begun and ended under such cir- 
cumstances, in which the organs produced by the seed would have 
no power to fix any of the principles of the atmosphere to repair the 
loss of carbon which the seed suffers. It is evident that this loss of 
carbon must have a limit, which is probably that of germination. 



CONTINUED GERMINATION OF PEAS. 

Ten peas, weighing together 2.237 grms. or 34.534 grs. troy, 
taken as quite dry, were put to germinate in a dusky room, the tem- 
perature of which was maintained between 12° and 17° cent. (54° 
and 63° Fahr.) The experiment, begun the 5th of May, was ended 
on the 1st of July. 

The germinated peas, when dried, weighed 1.075 grm. or 16.595 
grs. troy. 



GERMIJMATION. 31 

Composition of the peas : 

BEFORE GERMINATION. AFTER GERMINATION. 

Carbon 46.5 44.0 

Hydrogen 6.1 6.0 

Azote 4.2 6.7 

Oxygen 40.1 36.9 

Ashes • • 3.1 6.4 

100.0 100.0 

SUMMARY OF THE EXPERIMENT. 

Grains troy. Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Azote. Salts, Earths. 
Peas set to germinate... 34.534 cont'ng 16.055 2.115 13.843 1.447 1.064 
Peas which had germi- 
nated 16.595 " 7.293 1.0 03 6.128 1.111 1 .064 

Difference —17.939 —8.703^^.1 12 ^^^715 —0.336 07000 

Peas, during their germination, pushed to this extreme term, 
therefore, suffered a loss of about 52 per cent., the loss being refer- 
able to each of their constituent elements, which are summed up in 
carbon, water, and ammonia. 

7.719 of oxygen taking 0.972 of hydrogen to form water ; 
0.339 of azote requiring 0.077 of hydrogen to form ammonia ; 

1.049' which represents as nearly as possible the quantity of 
hydrogen eliminated. 

In this experiment, therefore, we see that a seed weighing 3.453 
grs. troy, suffered a daily loss of about 0.077 of a grain troy of 
carbon. 

CONTINUED GERMINATION OF WHEAT. 

On the 5th of May, 46 corns or grains of wheat, supposed to be 
quite dry, and weighing 1.665 grm. or 25.704 grs. troy, were set to 
germinate in the dark. 

On the 25th of June, the germinated wheat, when dried, weighed 
0.713 grm. or 11.007 grs. troy. 

Composition : 

BEFORE GERMINATION. AFTER GERMINATION. 

Carbon 45.5 41.1 

Hydrogen 5.7 6.0 

Azote 3.4 8.0 supposed. 

Oxygen 43.1 39.5 

Ashes 2.3 - — -'^"i-J^ calculated. 

100.0 tool noiJjniirtoo.O 
91'j// Jd^is- 

SUMMARY OF THE EXPfiMMfejT. 
Grains uoy. Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Azote. Salts, Earths. 

Wheat placed to 
germinate 25.704 containing 11.704 1.466 11.086 0.879 0.588 

Wheat germina- 
ted 1 1.007 4.523 0.343 4.373 0.879 0-588 

Difference —14.697 " —7.181—0.803 —6.713 0.000 0.000 

During the germination, continued for fifty-one days, consequently 
this wheat lost 57 per cent., and the loss may be wholly referred to 



32 CHEMICAL PHENOMENA, ETC. 

the elements of carbonic acid and water, i. e. to carbon, hydrogen, 
and oxygen.* 

These results of the elementary analysis of seeds of different 
kinds, before and after germination, tend, therefore, to show that the 
chemical phenomena which take place in the earliest periods of ger- 
mination, continue to go on even after the organic matter of the 
seed has been changed into a proper vegetable, imperfect, undoubt- 
edly, but still possessing the essential organs of plants, — roots, a 
stem, and leaves. Deprived of light, the blanched vegetable may be 
said to vegetate in a negative manner, expending, exhaling the ele- 
mentary principles contained in the seed whence it sprung. 

The general practice of sowing seeds at some depth in the ground, 
led to the belief, for a long time, that light was prejudicial to germi- 
nation. Sennebier had even inferred so much from his experiments, 
which appeared to derive confirmation from those of Ingenhousz, 
and which were instituted for the express purpose of discovering the 
comparative influences of sun-light and darkness on the germination 
and growth of vegetables.! But M. de Saussure showed that the 
prejudicial influence attributed to the light was connected with the 
drying of the seed, in consequence of its exposure to a higher tem- 
perature. M. de Saussure caused seeds to germinate at the same 
time under two bell-glasses of equal capacity. One of these shades 
was opaque, the other was transparent, and so placed as to re- 
ceive the diffused light of day. The temperature was the same in 
either. The seeds sprung simultaneously under both glasses. J 
Within a few days, the vegetation under the transparent shade was 
most advanced ; which is exactly what we should have expected 
from all that has already been said of the functions of the organized 
parts subjected to the action of light. 

We are indebted to M. de Humboldt for a number of very curious 
observations on the property which chlorine possesses of stimulating 
or favoring germination. This action of chlorine is so decided, that 
it is apparent even upon old seeds which will not germinate when 
placed under ordinary circumstances. The experiments of M. de 
Humboldt were made, in the first instance, on the common cress, 
(lepidium sativum.) The seeds were placed in two test tubes of 
glass, one of which contained a weak solution of chlorine, the otlier 
common water. The tubes were placed in the dark, the tempera- 
ture being maintained at about 15° cent. (59° Fahr.) In the chlo- 
rine solution, germination took place in six or seven hours ; from 
thirty-six to thirty-eight were required before it was manifest in the 
seeds in the water. In the chlorine, the radicles had attained the 
length of .0585 Eng. inch, after the lapse of fifteen hours, while 
they were scarcely visible at the end of twenty hours in the seeds 
submerged in water. § 

* The small quantity operated on prevented any estimates being made of the azote 
lost. Its proportion was supposed not to have varied. It is extremely probable, how- 
ever, that there was some slight disengagement of azote, as in the preceding experi- 
ment. 

t Saussure, Rech. Chimiques, p. 23. % De Saussure, op. cit. p. 23. 

^ Humboldt, Flora fribcrgensis subterranea, p. 156. 



EVOLUTION' AND GROWTH. 33 

In the botanical gardens of Berlin, Potsdam, and Vienna, this pro- 
perty of chlorine has been made available to excellent ends; by its 
means many old seeds, upon which a great variety of trials had 
already been made in vain to make them sprout, were brought to 
germinate. At Schoenbrunn, for instance, they had never succeeded 
in raising the clusea rosea from the seed ; but M. de Humboldt suc- 
ceeded at once, by forming a paste of peroxide of manganese, with 
water and hydrochloric acid, in which he set the seeds of the clusea, 
and then placed them in a temperature of from 62° to 75° cent. 
(143° to 167° Fahr.) It seems very likely that this discovery of M. 
de Humboldt may yet be taken advantage of in our every-day hus- 
bandry. It is quite certain that the whole of the seed which we 
commit to the ground, does not spring up, especially when we are 
forced to have recourse to seed that is two or three years old ; the 
loss is then frequently very considerable. But a solution of chlo- 
rine, or a mixture which would evolve it, could not cost much, its 
use would add little or nothing to the very trifling e.xpense which is 
generally incurred in pickling the wheat that is employed as seed. 



§ III.— EVOLUTION AND GROWTH OF PLANTS. 

As germination advances, we see those organs acquiring shape 
and size which had appeared at first in the rudimentary state. The 
roots extend in length, and increase in number, and their extremities 
become covered with capillary fibres. The stem as it rises puts 
forth branches in all directions, which become covered with leaves. 
The cotyledons which had nourished the young plant during the 
first days of its existence, wither and fall. Under the influence of 
the solar light, the vegetation progresses amain, and the organic 
matter, which finally constitutes the plant when it has attained matu- 
rity, weighs vastly more than the same matter which existed pre- 
viously in the seed. To quote a single instance from the family of 
annual plants, a seed of field beet of the weight of .06175 of a crain, 
may by the end of the autumn give birth to a root which with its 
leaves shall weigh 162099grs. or upwards of 28lbs.* 

This immense and rapid assimilation can have no other source 
than the soil, the air, and water. Without, at this time, pausing to 
consider the useful influence which the soil, and the substances it 
contains, exert upon the entire development of vegetables, we shall 
here assume it as a general principle that water and the air of the 
atmosphere alone, are capable of furnishing them with all the ele- 
ments which enter into their composition, to wit — carbon, hydrogen, 
oxygen, and azote. In other words, a seed may germinate, vegetate, 
give birth to a plant which shall attain to complete maturity, by the 

* Actual weight of a bcc'.-root (rrown at Bechelbronn in 1811 



34 EVOLUTION AND GROWTH. 

mere concurrence of water and the gases, or vapors which are dif- 
^ fused through the atmosphere. This fact is demonstrated by the 
following experiment : — 

In a sufficient quantity of properly moistened roughly pounded 
brick-dust, (which had been heated to redness in order to destroy 
every trace of organic matter,) a few peas were sown on the 9th 
of May, and the pot was transferred to a green-house in order to 
protect the plants from the dust and impurities which always fly 
about in the open air. 

On the 16th of July, the peas, which looked extremely well and 
healthy, were in flower. Each seed had sent forth one stem, and 
each stem, abundantly covered with leaves, bore a flower. 

On the 15th of August the pods were ripe ; no more water was 
given, and by the end of the month the plants were dry. 

The length of the stalks varied from about three feet three inches 
to five feet ; but they were extremely slender, and the leaves not 
more than one third the ordinary size. The pods were 1.3 inch, 
by from 0.3 to 0.4 of an inch broad. They generally contained two 
peas each ; one contained a single pea only, but this was almost 
twice the size of any of the others. 

In the course of three months, therefore, these peas came to per- 
fect maturity — ripe seeds were gathered. The analysis of the crop, 
which I shall give by and by, in connection with another question 
which we shall have to discuss, showed that tiie harvest obtained 
under the conditions indicated, contained a considerably larger pro- 
portion of each of the elements found than was originally contained 
in the seed from which it sprung. 

Carbon being the predominating principle in plants, it is our first 
duty to inquire into the origin of so much of this element as is as- 
similated in the course of vegetation. 

Carbon is met with in very small quantity in the atmosphere in 
the state of carbonic acid, and as this is one of the most soluble of 
the gases which enter into the constitution of the air, water always 
contains a considerable quantity of it in solution. Carbonic acid 
may therefore be in relation with plants by the medium of the air 
amidst which they live, and of the water which is no less indispen- 
sable to their existence. We have now to ascertain in what way 
this gas evolves and sets free its carbon in favor of living vegetables. 

Bonnet, having put some fresh leaves at the bottom of a jar con- 
taining spring water, observed that when exposed to the rays of 
the sun, they gave off bubbles of air. He sought to ascertain 
whether this disengagement of gas was due to the leaves, or to 
the liquid in which they were contained. For the spring water, he 
therefore substituted water deprived of its air by boiling, and he 
found that the leaves exposed to the sun's light in this water, no 
longer gave off any bubbles of air. Bonnet, therefore, concluded 
that the gas which he collected in his first experiment, proceeded 
from the water. 

In 1771, Priestley discovered, that by emitting oxygen, plants had 
the property' of ameliorating atmospherical air, which had been 



ASSIMILATION OF CARBON. 35 

vitiated by the respiration of animals or by combustion.* This un- 
expected discovery immediately arrested the attention of vegetable 
physiologists. Nevertheless, Priestley was not yet master, so to 
speak, of the capital experiment which he had announced to the 
world of science. He had not seized all the circumstances which 
assure its success. Occasionally the leaves which were the subjects 
of experiment did not cause the disengagement of any gas ; occa- 
sionally, too, the air disengaged, far from being oxygen — far from 
ameliorating the atmosphere, was found to be carbonic acid gas. It 
was Ingenhousz who made out the influence of the solar light upon 
the phenomenon in question. He proved, by a vast number of dis- 
tinct experiments, that leaves exhale oxygen when they are exposed 
to the light of the sun. He perceived, moreover, that in the dark 
they vitiate the air, rendering it improper for respiration and com- 
bustion. f 

But the origin of the oxygen disengaged from water by leaves 
exposed to the light of the sun still remained to be discovered. It 
was Sennebier who took this important step, by showing that it was 
to the carbonic acid generally contained in water that leaves ex- 
posed to the sun's light owed their faculty of evolving oxygen gas. 
With this interesting fact, it was easy to render an account of all 
the anomalies that had been successively announced : boiled water, 
as Bonnet had observed, could not afford any air, and spring water 
should usually give more than river water, as Ingenhousz had no- 
ticed, for the simple reason that boiled water neither contains 
carbonic acid gas nor any other kind of air ; and that well water 
generally contains a larger quantity of carbonic acid in solution than 
river water. 

In giving the grand features in the history of this brilliant discov- 
ery of the eighteenth century, it may be said that Bonnet was the 
first who observed the phenomenon of the gaseous evolution effected 
by the leaves of vegetables ;| that Priestley announced that the gas 
disengaged was oxygen ; that Ingenhousz demonstrated the neces- 
sity of the solar light to the production of the phenomenon ; finally, 
that it was Sennebier, to whom was reserved the honor of showing 
that the oxygen gas obtained under these circumstances is the pro- 
duct of the decomposition of carbonic acid. 

It was, however, matter of supreme interest to study this decom- 
position of carbonic acid in its last details. It was imperative, for 
instance, to ascertain what relation existed between the volume of 
the oxygen disengaged and the volume of the carbonic acid decom- 
posed. This was admirably accomplished by M. Theodore de Saus- 
sure in a long series of remarkable experiments, of which I shall here 
endeavor briefly to state the main results. 

The conclusion which follows naturally from the discovery of 
Sennebier, was that carbonic acid exercised a favorable influence on 
vegetation by supplying plants with the carbon which enters into 

* Experiments and Observations, vol. ii. 

t Experiments on Vegetaliles. 

t Sur I'usage des feuilles dans les plantes, p. 31. 



36 EVOLUTION AND GROWTH. 

their constitution. Percival ascertained by direct experiment the 
accuracy of this inference by placing plants in a current of atmo 
spheric air, mixed with a pretty large proportion of this gas. By 
means of a comparative experiment, he saw that a plant in such 
circumstances made much greater progress than one subjected to a 
current of ordinary air.* The researches of Saussure, in confirm- 
ing in all respects those of his predecessors, added this farther very 
important fact : that to act beneficially upon vegetables the carbonic 
acid must be mixed with oxygen. 

Under a bell glass of the capacity of 398 cubic inches, placed over 
mercury, with a delicate film of water swimming on its surface, he 
introduced three young peas, which displaced about y^^ of the in- 
cluded air. The atmosphere was composed of common air and 
carbonic acid gas in diflTerent proportions. 

The experiments were conducted successively in the sunshine and 
in the shade. In the sun, the apparatus received daily the direct 
action of the light during five or six hours : when the light was too 
vivid it was somewhat lessened by shading. In the sunlight the 
plants lived for several days in an atmosphere composed of equal 
parts of air and carbonic acid ; they then faded. But they died 
much more speedily in atmospheres which contained two-thirds, or 
three-fourths, or a fortiori which consisted entirely of carbonic acid. 
The young plants throve decidedly when the atmosphere contained 
about jifth of carbonic acid ; their growth was evidently more vigor- 
ous here than it was in simple air ; and at the conclusion of one ex- 
periment which extended over ten days, almost the whole of the 
carbonic acid was found replaced by, or changed into oxygen : the 
peas had assimilated the carbon. 

The smallest quantity of carbonic acid added to the air, was 
found injurious to the plants when they were kept in the shade. 
Young peas lived only six days under such circumstances, when 
the atmosphere around them consisted of a quarter of its volume of 
carbonic acid. They lived ten days when the proportion of this 
gas did not exceed a twelfth ; but then they scarcely grew at all in 
the mixture ; they certainly made much less progress than they 
■would have done in common air. Saussure concluded, from these 
experiments, that carbonic acid was useful to growing vegetables 
only when present along with oxygen, and that it ceases to be 
so when the atmosphere contains more than ^^th of its volume of 
the gas. 

To determine the proportion of oxygen set at liberty during the 
decomposition of carbonic acid by plants, Saussure composed an 
atmosphere of common air and carbonic acid, the latter in the pro- 
portion of 0.075 ; the mixture was confined under a bell-glass of 
the capacity of 5.746 litres or 10. 11'3 pints, standing over mercury 
as in the former experiments. Seven plants of the periwinkle were 
introduced into the apparatus, their roots dipping into 15 cub. centim. 
- or 5.895 cub. iii. of water — the water was limited as much as possible, 

* Manchester Memoirs, vol. ii. 



DECOMPOSITJOx\ OF CARBOMIC ACID. 37 

in order that the absorption of carbonic acid, which must, of course, 
take place, might be thrown out of the reckoning. The experiment 
was continued for six days, during which the plants received the 
direct rays of the sun from five to eleven o'clock in the morning. 
On the seventh day, the plants were withdrawn. They had pre- 
served their freshness. All the corrections made for temperature 
and pressure, the volume of the atmosphere in which they had lived 
was not found changed by more than about 20 cubic centimetres, 
7.8 c. in., a quantity which is within the possible errors of compu- 
tation ; but the composition of the air had undergone very notable 
changes : the carbonic acid had disappeared, and the eudiometer 
proclaimed 0.21 of oxygen instead of the 0.21 which it contained 
originally.* 

RESULTS OF THE EXPERI.MENTS. 

c. inches. Azote. Oxygen. Carb. aciJ. 

Before: Volume of atmosphere 2257 containing 1650 438.5 169. 3 

.eftcr : •• " 2257 " 1704 .^.'.S. 

■ +54 +VV»» — i6'J.3 

The periwinkles, consequently, had caused 169.3 cubic inches of 
carbonic acid to disappear, and given off upwards of one hundred 
and fourteen cubic inches of oxygen. Had the whole oxygen of the 
carbonic acid been set at liberty, this volume would have been pre- 
cisely equal to that of the acid gas decomposed ; but as no more 
than one hundred and fourteen cubic inches of oxygen were obtained, 
it must be inferred that the periwinkles had fixed 54.6 cubic inches 
of this gas. 

This is the conclusion, indeed, to which M. de Saussure came, 
and subsequent experiments have confirmed its accuracy. The 
following table contains a summary of five experiments that were 
instituted : 

c. inches. c. inches. 

Eip.\. Carbonic acid disappearing- • .169.3 Oxygen disengaged.. .114.7 

Azote disengaged 54.0 

169.3 

£ip. 2. " " " ...121.4 Oxygen disengaged. • . 88 

Azote disengaged 33 

121 
Eip.2. " " " ....58.5 Oxygen disengaged.. ..47. 5 

Azote disengaged 8.2 

55.7 

Eip.4. " " " ...120-2 Oxygen disengaged 96.6 

Azote disengaged 7.8 

104.4 

Exp. 5. " " " ....72.3 Oxygen disengaged 49.5 

Azote disengaged 22.4 

71.9 

There is one remark which it is impossible to avoid making in sur- 
veying this table ; it is to the effect, that the azote disengaged rep- 

* Saussure, Kecherches chimiques, p. 40. 
4 



38 EVOLUTION AND GKOWTH. 

resents almost exactly the volume of oxygen which it would be 
necessary to add, in order that the oxygen collected should represent 
the whole of that which entered into the constitution of the carbonic 
acid decomposed. It is probable that the excess of azote which ap- 
peared in all these experiments was present in principal part in the 
air contained and condensed within the interstices of the plants, or 
held in solution in the water which bathed their roots. It would be 
difficult to assign it any other origin ; such, for instance, as that 
from changes in the azotized principles of the plants that were the 
subject of experiment. In his first experiment, in fact, M. de Saus- 
sure fixes the weight of the dry matter of the seven periwinkle 
plants at 41.6 grains. Now, from numerous determinations of azote 
which I have had occasion to make in regard to plants of very dif- 
ferent ages and species, I think I can say that these periwinkles, 
taken as dry, did not contain more than .385 of azote ; this, in ref- 
erence to the weight assumed by M. de Saussure, would be 1.042 
grs. or 20.8 cubic inches of azote ; and the volume of azote disen- 
gaged in this first experiment was 54.6 cubic inches. It is proper 
further to observe, that the state of health which the plants pre- 
sented on the conclusion of the experiment does not allow us to sup- 
pose a total decomposition of the azotized matters which entered 
into their constitution. These various considerations lead us to in- 
fer that the excess of azote collected must have been displaced by 
oxygen. We are, therefore, at liberty to presume, from the experi- 
ments now referred to, that the volume of oxygen produced probably 
represents the volume of carbonic acid decomposed. 

The necessity of oxygen gas in the decompounding action which 
plants exposed to the light exert so energetically upon carbonic acid, 
leads us to study particularly the phenomena which oxygen exhibits 
in connection with growing plants. When a number of freshly 
gathered and healthy leaves are placed during the night under a bell- 
glass of atmospheric air, they condense a portion of the oxygen ; 
the volume of the air diminishes, and there is a quantity of free car- 
bonic acid formed, generally less than the volume of oxygen which 
has disappeared. If the leaves which have absorbed this oxygen 
during their stay in the dark, be now exposed to the sun's light, they 
restore it nearly in equal quantity, so that, all corrections made, the 
atmosphere of the bell-glass returns to its original composition and 
volume. 

Leaves in general have the same elTect when they are placed alter- 
nately in the dark and in the light ; there is, however, a very obvious 
difference in the intensity with which the phenomenon is produced, 
according to the nature of the leaves. The quantity of carbonic 
acid formed during the night is by so much the less, as the leaves 
are more fleshy, thicker, and therefore more watery. The green 
matter of fleshy leaved plants, of the cactus opuntia, to quote a par- 
ticular instance, does not produce any sensible quantity of carbonic 
acid in the dark : but these leaves condense oxygen, and exhale it 
again like those which are less fleshy, when they are brought into 
the sun, after having been kept for some time in the dark. 



DECOMPOSITION OF CARBONIC ACID. 39 

Saussure applied the names of inspiration and expiration of plants 
to these alternate effects, led by the analogy — somewhat remote, it 
must be confessed — which the phenomenon presents with the respi- 
ration of animals. 

The inspiration of leaves has certain limits ; in prolonging their 
stay in the dark, the absorption becomes less and less : it ceases 
entirely when the leaves have condensed about their own volume of 
oxygen gas. And let it not be supposed that the nocturnal inspira- 
tion of leaves is the consequence of a merely mechanical action, 
comparable, for example, to that exerted by porous substances gen- 
erally upon gases. The proof that it is not so is supplied by the 
fact that the same effects do not follow when leaves are immersed in 
carbonic acid, hydrogen, or azote. In such circumstances there is 
no appreciable diminution of the atmosphere that surrounds the 
plant. The primary cause of the inspiration of oxygen by the 
leaves of living plants is, therefore, obviously of a chemical nature. 

AVith the facts which have just been announced before us, it seems 
very probable that during the nocturnal inspiration, the carbonic acid 
which appears is formed at the cost of carbon contained in the leaves, 
and that this acid is retained either wholly or in part, in proportion 
as the parenchyma of the leaf is more or less plentifully provided 
with water. A plant that remains permanently in a dark place, 
exposed to the open air, loses carbon incessantly ; the oxygen of the 
atmosphere then exerts an action that only terminates with the life 
of the plant : a result which is apparently in opposition to what takes 
place in an atmosphere of limited extent. But it is so, because in 
the free air the green parts of vegetables can never become entirely 
saturated with carbonic acid, inasmuch as there is a ceaseless 
interchange going on between this gas, and the mass of the surround- 
ing atmosphere ; there is, then, incessant penetration of the gases, 
as it is called. There is a kind of slow combustion of the carbon 
of a plant which is abstracted from the reparative influence of the 
light. 

The oxygen of the air also acts, but much less energetically, upon 
the organs of plants that do not possess a green color. 

The roots buried in the ground are still subjected to the action of 
this gas. It is indeed well known, that to do their office properly, 
the soil must be .soft and permeable, whence the repeated hoeings 
and turnings of the soil, and the pains that are taken to give access 
to the air into the ground in so many of the operations of agricul- 
ture. The roots that penetrate to a great depth, such as those of 
many trees, are no less dependent on the same thing ; the moisture 
that reaches them from without brings them the oxygen in solution, 
which they require for their development. It is long since Dr. 
Stephen Hales showed that the interstices of vegetable earth still 
contained air mingled with a very considerable proportion of oxygen. 
The roots of vegetables, moreover, appear generally to be stronger 
and more numerous as they are nearer the surface. In tropical 
countries various plants have creeping roots which often acquire 
dimensions little short of those of the trunk thev feed. 



40 EVOLUTION AND GROWTH. 

If a root detached from the stem be introduced under a bell-glass 
full of oxygen gas, the volume of the gas diminishes, carbonic acid 
is formed, of which a portion only mingles with the gas of the 
receiver, a cffertain quantity being retained by the moisture of the 
root. The volume of the gas thus retained is always less than that 
of the root itself, however long the experiment may be continued. 
In these circumstances, whether in the shade or the sun, roots act 
precisely as leaves do when kept in the dark. Roots still connected 
with their stems, give somewhat different results. 

When the experiment is made with the stem and the leaves in the 
free air, while the roots are in a limited atmosphere of oxygen, they 
then absorb several times their own volume of this gas. This is be- 
cause the carbonic acid formed and absorbed is carried into the general 
system of the plant, where it is elaborated by the leaves, if exposed to 
the same light, or simply exhaled if the plant be kept in the dark. 

The presence of oxygen in the air which has access to the roots 
is not merely favorable ; it is absolutely indispensable to the exer- 
cise of their functions. A plant, the stem and leaves of which are 
in the air, soon dies if its roots are in contact with pure carbonic 
acid, with hydrogen gas, or azote. The use of oxygen in the growth 
of the subterraneous parts of plants, explains wherefore our annual 
plants, which have largely developed roots, require a friable and 
loose soil for their advantageous cultivation. This also enables us 
to understand wherefore trees die, when their roots are submerged 
in stagnant water, and wherefore the effect of submersion in general 
is less injurious when the water is running, such water always con- 
taining more air in solution than that which is stagnant. 

The woody parts, the fruit, and those organs of plants in general 
which have not a green color, stand in the same relations to oxygen 
as the roots : they merely change this gas into carbonic acid, which 
is then transported to the plant at large, to suffer decomposition by 
the green parts. In this action we observe a displacement, a kind 
of translation of the carbon of the lower to the upper parts of 
plants. 

The decomposition of carbonic acid by plants admitted, we have 
still to examine whether, in the phenomena of vegetation, the leaves 
decompose the carbonic acid of the atmosphere directly, or the acid 
gas, previously dissolved in the water, which moistens the ground, 
be conducted by the way of absorption into the tissues of vegetables, 
there to suffer decomposition. The quantity of carbonic acid con- 
tained in the air is so small, and the growth of plants, on the con- 
trary, is often so rapid, that it might reasonably be suspected that 
the carbon which they require was introduced in great part by this 
way of absorption. In that series of beautiful experiments in which 
M. Saussure exposed plants to the influence of atmospheres more 
or less charged with carbonic acid, the water in which their roots 
were plunged was in contact with the mixed atmospheres. It was 
therefore possible that the carbonic acid gas entered the vegetables 
in the solution by the roots. 

Sennebier made an experiment to show that leaves decompose 



DECOMPOSITION* OK CARBONIC ACID. 41 

both the carbonic acid which is in contact with them externally, and 
that which is dissolved in the water absorbed by their woody tissue. 
He took two branches of a peach-tree, and introduced them into a 
couple of bell-glasses filled with water from the same spring.* The 
lower end of each branch dipped into a flask. One of the flasks 
was filled with water charged with carbonic acid ; the other con- 
tained air : the two bell-glasses were exposed to the light. The 
leaves of the branch whose extremity dipped into the solution of 
carbonic acid, disengaged 99.4 cubic inches of oxygen gas under 
the bell which covered it ; the leaves of the other branch only pro- 
duced 52.2 cubic inches in the same time. 

This experiment does not perhaps afford all the sufficient evi- 
dence of the decomposition of gaseous carbonic acid as it occurs in 
t!ie atmosphere, and mixed with a great mass of air. It appears, 
however, that the leaves of plants have the power of decomposing 
the gaseous carbonic acid which is mixed with the air, and that 
even with surprising rapidity. 

In the summer of 1840, 1 introduced into a balloon of the capacity 
of about twelve quarts and a half, and furnished with three tubulures 
or openings, the branch of a vine in full growth and bearing twenty 
leaves. The woody part of the branch was fixed by means of a collar 
of caoutchouc to the lower orifice of the balloon ; a fine tube, intend- 
ed to establish a communication between the interior of the vessel 
and the outer air, was introduced into the superior tubulure ; the 
lateral opening communicated by means of a tube with an apparatus 
which measured with great accuracy the quantity of carbonic acid 
contained in the atmosphere. 

In this experiment the air, before reaching the apparatus for 
measuring the carbonic acid, passed through the great balloon con- 
taining the vine branch. The rate with which the air passed through 
the apparatus was regulated by the flow of an aspirator, and was at 
the rate of about twelve quarts per hour. 

The apparatus was exposed to the sun ; the experiment beginning 
at eleven and finishing at three o'clock. 

In one experiment it was found, all corrections made, that the at- 
mospheric air, after having passed through the balloon, contained in 
volume 0.0002 of carbonic acid gas ; the air of the adjoining court 
contained at the same moment 0.00045 of carbonic acid. 

In another experiment, the air, after having passed over the leaves, 
contained but 0.0001 of carbonic acid ; the air of the court contain- 
ing 0.0004 of the same gas. In traversing the space in which the 
vine branch, exposed to the light of the sun, was included, therefore 
the air was deprived of three fourths of the whole quantity of car- 
bonic acid which it contained. 

In operating with the same apparatus during the night, opposite 
results were obtained ; the air in traversing the balloon generally 
acquired a quantity of carbonic acid, the double of that which the 
atmosphere contained at the same moment. 

* This was common water containing carbonic acid. 
4* 



42 EVOLUTION AND GROWTH. 

I conceive that it is by such a method as this, that the general 
phenomena of vegetable respiration in plants still connected with the 
soil ought to be studied. 

The experiments which I have now related must satisfy every 
one, that the leaves of living plants actually assimilate the carbon 
which occurs in our atmosphere in the state of carbonic acid ; they 
also explain the well-known fact that plants thrive better in air that 
is in motion, and frequently renewed, than in a perfect calm. 

From all we have seen up to this time, then, we feel authorized 
to conclude that the greater proportion if not the whole of the carbon 
which enters into the constitution of vegetables is derived from the 
carbonic acid of the atmosphere. The experiments cited, show 
how the vital force acts at first on the oxygen of the air during ger- 
mination, and next upon its carbonic acid during vegetation properly 
so called. But in none of the experiments which have been quoted, 
have we seen any thing which could lead us to suspect that the 
azote of the atmosphere was absorbed in sensible quantity. 

It is true, indeed, that at one time Priestley, and after him, In- 
genhousz, thought that they had observed an absorption of azote 
during the growth of plants in confined atmospheres. But the ex- 
periments which have been since performed by Saussure have not 
confirmed their conclusions upon this point. Saussure even thought 
that he had perceived a slight exhalation of azote. 

Nevertheless, the presence of azote in vegetables being incon- 
testable, and the assimilation of this principle during their growth 
being in some sort demonstrated by the fact that seeds are multiplied, 
physiologists were led to imagine that the azote was derived from 
the soil. And in nature, indeed, the growth of a plant does not take 
place at the sole cost of water and the atmosphere. The roots 
which attach it to the earth there also find elements of nutrition. 
In ordinary circumstances the growth of a plant takes place by the 
simultaneous concurrence of the food which the roots encounter in 
the ground, and that which the leaves abstract from the gaseous 
elements of the air. As it is further acknowledged that the food 
which is supplied by the soil is for the most part azotized, manures 
have therefore been regarded as the principal and even as the ex- 
clusive source of the azote which is met with in vegetables. The 
observations of Hermbsteedt, in showing that the grain which was 
grown under the influence of the most highly azotized manures 
contained the largest quantity of gluten, gave a certain force to this 
view. Nevertheless, there are facts well established in agriculture 
which induce us to think that in many cases vegetables find in the 
atmosphere a part of the azote which is necessary to their con- 
stitution. 

The majority of crops exhaust the soil ; but there are still some 
which render it more fertile. We shall see, by and by, when treat- 
ing of the rotation of crops, that if, after having cut a field of trefoil 
once, the second crop be ploughed down, new fertility is communicated 
to the ground, in spite of the considerable mass of forage which had 
previously been taken from it. It appears therefore evident, that 



ASSIMILATION OF AZOTE. 43 

in ploughing down this second crop we restore such a quantity of 
organic or organizable matter, that, all things taken into account, 
the ground actually receives more from the atmosphere than was 
taken away from it in the first cutting. 

The latest experiments of physiologists would seem to show that 
plants merely take carbon from the air, and appropriate the elements 
of water. But the ideas which are now generally adopted in regard to 
the active principle of manures make it difficult to conceive that the 
soil, by receiving non-azotized matters only, could acquire the degree 
of fertility which is certainly obtained from the cultivation of those 
crops that are called amelinraling, a fertility which enables us to 
follow these crops with others, rich in azotized principles. 

There is therefore reason for believing that the ploughing in of 
certain green crops, and fallowing, are not effectual merely by in- 
troducing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, but azote also into the 
soil. And it is absolutely necessary that this should be so, in order 
that the fertility of those lands may be maintained which, from their 
position, can receive no manures from without. Let us take, for 
example, a farm laid out for the growth of white crops, and the 
rearing of cattle. Every year there is an exportation of grain, of 
flesh, and of the produce of the dairy ; that is to say, there is inces- 
sant exportation without any perceptible importation of azotized 
matter. Nevertheless, the soil maintains its fertility ; its losses are 
repaired by the principles which, in a good system of cultivation, 
pass from the atmosphere into the earth ; and among the number of 
these fertilizing principles it is beyond all question that azote must 
be present, in order that so much of this element as has been ex- 
ported may be replaced. 

The best established facts in agriculture, therefore, concurred in 
showing that azote is among the number of the elements that are 
fixed by plants during their growth. Still, as this truth had not been 
proved by the experiments of physiologists, the question had to be 
considered as yet undecided. It was with the hope of clearing up 
every thing in connection with it that I undertook the series of ex- 
periments, the chief features of which I shall now detail.* 

I had necessarily to follow a method of inquiry different from any 
which had yet been taken ; I had no chance of arriving at more de- 
finite results than those which had been already come to, had I cho- 
sen the old line of investigation. I therefore called in the aid of 
elementary analysis, with a view of comparing the composition of 
the seed with the composition of the harvest produced from it, at the 
sole cost of water and the air. By proceeding in this way I believed 
that the problem was capable of solution : without flattering my- 
self that I have completely resolved it, I conceive that something 
has been done in the right direction. The subject is one of the most 
delicate imaginable, and he who enters it requires indulgence. 

For soil, I made use of burned clay or silicious sand freed from 
all organic matter by proper calcination. In this soil, moistened 

* Boussugault, Annales de chiinie et de physique, t. Ixvii. p. 5, 2» s6rie, aan6e 1838. 



44 EVOLUTION AND GROWTH. 

with distilled water, were sown the seeds whose weight was known 
By a number of preliminary trials, the quantity of moisture which 
seed of the same kind, of the same growth, and taken at the same 
moment, lost by drying, commenced in the stove and finished in an 
oil-bath, at 110° C. {'230" Fahr.) was ascertained. The porcelain 
vessels, in which the experiment was conducted, were placed in a 
glass house at the end of a large garden. During the whole term, 
the windows were kept closed ; but the sun shone on the house all 
day. To remove the produce, the vessels were dried by a gentle 
heat. The roots of the plants then came out readily ; to free them 
completely from any adhering sand, they were moved about in a little 
distilled water, but never rubbed or bruised, for fear of loss ; it seem- 
ed even preferable to leave a little sand adhering. The harvest was 
then dried in the stove, so that it might be powdered ; and the com- 
plete desiccation was effected in the oil-bath in vacuo. 

In ascertaining previously by muneration the weight of the ashes 
contained in the seed, that of the produce, freed from all saline and 
earthy matter, became exactly known. 

Elementary analysis then proclaimed the composition of the pro- 
duce ; and it was only necessary now to compare it with the com- 
position of the seed, to have ascertained the proportion and the 
nature of the elements which had been assimilated during the vege- 
tation. 

FIRST EXPERIMENT. 

CULTURE OF RED CLOVER DURING THREE MONTHS. 

In the beginning of August a quantity of seed was sown, which, 
being dry and free from ashes, would have weighed 1.586 gramme, 
or 24.48 grs. troy. The crop presented a very good appearance ; 
the clover was from three to three and a half inches in height. The 
largest leaves could be included in a circle of about two inches in 
diameter. The length of the roots varied between two and four 
inches. Dried and bruised, the color of the produce was a deep 
green. 

The plant gathered quite dry, and supposed free from ash, weighed 
4.106 grammes, or 63.38 grs. troy ; analysis showed it to consist of — 

In the Seed. Iii the Produce. 

Carbon 50.8 50.7 

Hydrogen G.O 6.6 

Azote 7.'2 3.8 

Oxygen -36.0 38.9 

100.0 100.0 

RESULTS. 

Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxysren. Azote. 
5M.48 grs. troy containing after the analy.sis 12.44 1.4G6 8.815 1.75? 

63.38 " " " .■■ ■ 32.14 1 4.183 24. 1 55 2.408 

38.90 = grs. during ctiltivatio n . . . . +19.70 +2.717 +1.">.840 +0.649 

Thus, in the course of three months, the elementary matter of the 
eeed had nearly doubled, and the azote of the plants gathered shows 



ASSIMILATION OF ELEMENTS. 45 

an excess of 0.042 gramme, or 0.649 grs. troy, above the azote of the 
seed sovra. 

SECOND EXPERIMENT. 

GROWTH OF PEAS. 

Five peas, very nearly of the same weight, and together weighing 
1.211 gramme, or 18.69 grs. troy, were planted on the 9th of May, in 
a soil of recently burned clay in rough powder. On the 16th of July, 
the plants began to bloom, each pea having furnished a stem bearing 
a single flower. 

On the 15th of August the pods were quite ripe ; the stems were 
then from 39 to 40 inches in height. The leaves were smaller than 
those of the same peas grown in manured earth. The length of the 
pods was about 1.27 inch, by a breadth of about 0.43 inch. Four 
of these pods each contained two seeds ; the fifth had only one, but 
it was much longer than any of the others. 

The nine peas gathered and dried in the sun, weighed 1.674 gram., 
or 25.84 grs. ; after desiccation in vacuo, at 110° C, (230° F.,) they 
weighed 1.507 gram., or 23.26 grs. troy ; on combustion they yielded 
0.9 per cent, of residue. 

The roots, the stems, the pods, and the leaves, dried at 230° F., 
weighed 3.314 gram., or 51.16 grs. troy; and by combustion gave 
103 per cent, of ashes. 

As the result of several experiments, it was ascertained that peas, 
exactly in the condition of those which had been planted, contained 
91.4 per cent, of dry matter, and left by incineration 3.14 per cent, 
of residue. The five peas planted, taken as dry and free from ashes, 
would therefore have weighed 1.072 gram., or 16.54 grs. troy. 

Analysis showed in the 

Peas sown. Peas collected. Straw and roots. 

Carbon 48.0 54.9 52.8 

Hydrogen 6.4 G.8 6.2 

Azote 4.3 3.6 1.6 

Oxygen 41.3 34.7 39.4 

100.0 100.0 100.0 

RESULTS. 

Carbon. Hydrogren. Oxygen. Azole. 

Seeds 16.549, containing 7.950 1.065 6.523 0.710 

Crop 68.560, " * 36.680 4.384 25.930 1.559 

52.02 grs. by cultivation +28.73 +3.319 +19.11 +0.849 

From this experiment it appears that 16.549 grs. of seed found in 
the air, and obtained from the water with which they had been sup- 
plied during their growth, 52.02 grs. of elementary matter in the 
course of ninety-nine days' growtii, during the warmest months of 
the year; and that the quantity of azote originally contained in the 
seed wis more than doubled in the produce arrived at maturity. 

* Peas 45.89 

Straw and shells 22.66 

Total weight of the crop 68.55 



46 EVOLUTION AND GROWTH. 

THIRD EXPERIMENT. 

GROWTH OF WHEAT. 

Forty-six wheat corns were sown in burnt sand at the beginning 
of the month of August. At the end of September, the stalks were 
from fourteen to fifteen inches in height. The greater number of 
the lower leaves were yellow. The roots were of very considerable 
length, and formed a kind of mat, which made it difficult to wash 
and free them from sand. 

RESULTS OF THE ANALYSIS. 

Seeds. Crop. 

Carbon 46.6 48.2 

Hydrogen 5.8 5.8 

Azote 3.45 2.0 

Oxygen 44.15 44.0 

100.00 100.0 

RESULTS. 

Grs. Carbon. Hydroo;ell. Oxyg-en. Azote, 

The seed dried 25.38 containing 11.84 1.46 11.19 0.87 

The seed dried 46.65 " 22.47 2.67 20.57 0.92 

Gainbyculture 21.27 +10.63 +1.21 +9.38 +005 

In the course of three months' growth, therefore, the weight of 
the seed had, so to speak, doubled ; but the grain azote was scarcely 
appreciable. Nevertheless, this experiment upon the wheat had 
been conducted under precisely the same circumstances as that 
made upon the clover. The two crops grew in the same apparatus ; 
they were watered with the same water, which they received very 
nearly in the same quantity ; the seed was even sown in vessels 
having exactly the same extent of surface, in order that either crop 
might he exposed to the same chances of error arising from the ac- 
cidental presence of dust in the atmosphere. 

The plants produced under the circumstances indicated were far 
from presenting the vigor which they would have shown had they 
been grown in the open field. After three months of growth, the 
clover was much less forward than some which had been sown, for 
comparison, in a manured and gypsumed soil at the same time. The 
wheat showed the same weakness ; and after the second month, I 
observed that each new leaf which was developed upward in the 
stem, caused one of those at the lower part to droop and grow yel- 
low. The peas, although they reached maturity, had much smaller 
leaves, and both fewer and smaller seeds than similar plants grown 
at large. 

It is well known that it is in great part due to the fertility of the 
soil in which seeds are grown that the health and vigor of young 
plants must be ascribed. A celebrated agriculturist, Schwartz, as- 
certained, for example, that young coleworts or cabbage plants ex- 
hausted in a remarkable manner the soil in which they were raised 
for transplantation. The good effects of the first nourishment ob- 



ASSIMILATION OF ELEMENTS. 47 

tained in a well-manured soil must extend subsequently to every 
part of the vegetable ; and it is easily understood that a plant which 
has languished in its earliest periods of existence can never acquire 
a good constitution afterwards. 

It therefore became interesting to carry out experiments of the 
nature of those already related, in connection with plants vigorously 
organized, and which had been raised in the first instance in a fer- 
tile soil. . 

FOURTH EXPERIMENT. 

GROWTH OF CLOVER. 

In a field of clover sown in the spring of the preceding year, 
several plants as like one another as possible were chosen. The 
earth adhering to the roots was removed by careful washing under 
a small stream of water ; the plants were then made dry between 
leaves of blotting paper, and exposed for a few hours in the air. 
Three of these plants preserved for analysis weighed when green 
6.750 grammes, or 104.20 grs. troy. 

Three other plants, weighing 6.820 gram, or 105.28 grs. troy, 
were set in sand recently calcined and moistened with distilled 
water. The transplanting took place on the 28th of May, and the 
plants were forthwith protected from dust. 

For some days they seemed to languish, but by and by they be- 
came remarkably vigorous. In a month the clover had grown to 
twice its original height, and the leaves were of the most beautiful 
green : the plants had in all respects as fine an appearance as the 
clover of the same age which had been left growing in the field. 
The flowers showed themselves upon the 8th of July, and by the 
15th the flowering was complete : an end was put to the experiment 
on the 1st of August. 

RESULTS OF THE ANALYSIS. 
BEFORE CULTURE. AFTER CULTURE. 

Carbon 43.42 53.00 

Hydrogen 5.40 6.51 

Azote 3.75 2.45 

Oxygen 47.43 38.14 

100.00 100.00 

RESULTS. 

The trefoil transplanted, weighed when dry and freed from ashes 13.64 

After sixty-three days' culture on barren soil, it weighed 34.96 

Gained during culture 21.32 

Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxyg-en. Azote. 

The plant contained : before culture 5.92 0.74 6.46 0..50 

" after culuire 18.52 2.23 13.32 0.864 

Difference + 12.G0 -1-1.49 -1-6.86 +035 

Thus in two months' growth at tlie cost of the air and water, the 
clover had, so to say, tripled its quantity of organic matter; and the 
weight of azote contained in it was very nearly doubled. 



48 EVOLUTION AND GROWTH. 

FIFTH EXPERIMENT. 

VEGETATION OF OATS. 

I always failed in my attempts to transfer wheat plants from the 
ordinary soil in which the grain had been sown to barren sand ; they 
never survived the transplantation. It was not different with oat 
plants ; they also always died. It was at first supposed that the 
delicate radicles of these plants had been injured in the process of • 
taking them up and freeing their roots from adhering vegetable soil ; 
but I soon saw that this could not have been the case, for the same 
plants, treated precisely in the same manner, took very promptly 
when transplanted to garden mould, and even when they were put 
with their roots in pure water. It was with water, therefore, that 
the following experiment was conducted. 

June 20th, several oat plants were taken up from a field, and their 
roots were washed and cleansed. 

Three plants preserved for analysis, weighed 159.01 Igrs. 

Four plants, the subjects of experiment, weighed 221.844 grs. 
troy. They were protected from dust, their roots dipping into a 
vessel containing distilled water, which was regularly kept up to 
the same level. By the middle of July the stalks of these plants 
had grown to twice their former length ; and at this time it would 
have been difficult to have distinguished them from those growing 
in the open field. By the end of July the clusters had formed ; and 
on the 10th of August the grain seemed ripe. It was, therefore, 
taken up and dried in the stove, and reduced to powder to complete 
the desiccation at 110° cent. (230° Fahr.) 

ANALYSIS OF THE CROP. 

Transplanted. Gathered from the field. 

Carbon 53.0 48.0 

Hydrogen 6.8 6.2 

Oxygen 36.4 • 44.0 

Azote 3.8 1.7 

100.0 100.0 

SUMMARY. 

Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Azote. 

The oats when transplanted 

contained 12.967 1.636 8.770 0.910 

After 48 days of growth in dis- 
tilled water they contained -.23.157 2.979 21.180 0.818 

+10.190 +1.343 +12.410 —0.092 

The analysis, therefore, indicates a trifling loss of azote. 

In recapitulating the conclusions obtained from these experiments, 
we find : 

First. That trefoil and peas grown in a soil absolutely without 
manure, acquired a very appreciable quantity of azote, in addition to 
a large quantity of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. 



ASSIMILATION OF ELEMENTS. 49 

Second. That wheat and oats grown in the same circumstances, 
look carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen trom the air and water around 
them ; but that analysis showed no increase of azote in these plants 
after their maturity. 

The mode of experimenting followed had it in view simply to 
determine the assimilation of azote by certain vegetables, without 
entering into the question of the means by which this was effected ; 
and, indeed, in reference to the point, I can only offer conjectures. 

Azote may enter the living frame of plants directly, or, as M. 
Piobert has maintained, in the state of solution in the water, always 
aerated, which is taken up by their roots.* The observations of 
vegetable physiologists are not generaly favorable to this view. It 
is farther possible that the element in question may be derived from 
ammoniacal vapors, which, according to some philosophers, exist in 
infinitely small proportion in our atmosphere. These vapors, dis- 
solved by rains and dews, would readily make their way into plants, 
and might there undergo elaboration. 

It is long since Saussure alluded to the probable influence of am- 
moniacal vapors upon vegetation. Prof. Liebig has more recently 
maintained the same opinion, and has taken particular pains to prove 
that rain-water always contains a very minute quantity of carbonate 
of ammonia. 

To this cause, which must have the effect of infusing an azotized 
principle into the tissues of plants, must be added another, which is 
perhaps not the least energetic. It is this, that under certain elec- 
trical influences, of which M. Becquerel has made a particular study, 
hydrogen in the nascent state, in contact with azote, may actually 
give rise to ammonia. By means of this view, it becomes easy to 
conceive how non-azotized organic substances, under the mere in- 
fluence of the putrid fermentation, might give origin to ammoniacal 
salts, which would then exercise a fertilizing action on the soil. 

During the growth of plants, a portion of the water absorbed by 
the roots is evidently assimilated ; and this circumstance enables us 
to conceive the formation of many of the immediate principles of 
vegetables, the chemical composition of which is precisely repre- 
sented by carbon and the elements of water ; such as starch, sugar, 
etc. We can also understand the presence of those principles, 
which have further a certain proportion of oxygen in excess, inas- 
much as we have ascertained that during the decomposition of car- 
bonic acid by the green parts of vegetables, the whole of the oxygen 
is not eliminated. But there are substances elaborated by plants 
which, with reference to oxygen, contain a quantity of hydrogen 
much greater than is requisite to form water ; such are the resins 
and other carburets of hydrogen in the cone-bearing trees, and the 
fat oils in the oleaginous seeds. This excess of hydrogen led several 
physiologists to conclude that water was decomposed in the course 
of vegetation, — that there was fixation of its hydrogen and disen- 
gagement of its oxygen gas. 

* Piobert, M6in. de rAcadfemie de Metz, 1837. 
5 



50 EVOLUTION AND GROWTH. 

Nevertheless, the presence of hydrogen in excess in certain im- 
mediate vegetable principles is no decisive proof of the disjunction 
of the elements of water ; and if no definitive conclusion has been 
come to on the point, up to the present moment, it is because these 
hydrogenized principles are produced in plants which live under the 
influence of certain organic substances that are met with in the soil, 
where they act as manures, their composition being always complex, 
and often highly hydrogenized. 

The experiments of M. de Saussure do not lead us to suspect 
the decomposition of water ; inasmuch as by keeping plants for a 
whole month, under receivers filled with atmospheric air freed from 
carbonic acid, no apparent evolution of oxygen was observed. 
Operating in the same manner with air containing a certain propor- 
tion of carbonic acid, the quantity of oxygen disengaged was always 
less than that which entered into the constitution of the acid de- 
composed. 

This is the place to observe, and in connection with these very 
experiments of M. de Saussure, how little satisfactory this partial 
decomposition of carbonic acid, which corresponds to no definite 
proportion, appears. We already feel the difficulty of conceiving 
that this acid should be completely reduced by a living plant ; that 
is to say, that the whole of its carbon should become assimilated. 
The entire separation of a body so greedy of oxygen as carbon from 
its most highly oxygenated compound, must needs excite the greatest 
astonishment. 

The readiest conception suggested by the facts is this ; that by 
the agency of the solar light, and under the influence of the green 
matter, carbonic acid is turned into carbonic oxide by losing a por- 
tion of its oxygen. This modification appears more in conformity 
with the ascertained principles of chemical and physiological 
science. Still it must be allowed, that facts agree as little with . 
this mode of viewing the question as with that which assumes the 
entire decomposition of the carbonic acid. On the first assumption, 
the proportion of oxygen set at liberty is too small ; in the second, 
it is too great. 

The negative results of M. de Saussure, in relation to the separa- 
tion of the elements of water during vegetation, were obtained in 
the absence of carbonic acid, whilst the experiments which estab- 
lished the decomposition of this latter body, were necessarily made 
under the influence of moisture. It is possible, therefore, that the 
water and the carbonic acid underwent simultaneous decomposition ; 
and it becomes interesting, taking this view, to inquire whether the 
hypothesis according to which carbonic acid undergoes transforma- 
tion into carbonic oxide does not acquire a certain degree of proba- 
bility by calling in the effect of the decomposition of water in the 
phenomena observed. 

One volume of the gaseous oxide of carbon takes half a volume 
of oxygen gas to form one volume of carbonic acid. Reciprocally, 
one volume of carbonic acid gas, in undergoing transformation into 



ASSIMILATION OF ELEMENTS. 51 

the oxide of carbon, will give one volume of the oxide, +| a volume 
of oxygen gas. 

Thu?, in the hypothesis which we now discuss, for each volume 
of carbonic acid that is modified by the vegetation, there will be half 
a volume of oxygen gas disengaged. Any oxygen more than this 
half volume which appears, must be regarded as proceeding from 
the decomposition of water, the hydrogen of which will have been 
assimilated by the plant at the same time as the carbonic oxide de- 
rived from the carbonic acid ; and this view would perhaps enable 
us to conceive how the volume of oxygen which is disengaged du- 
ring the process of vegetation, may exceed the volume which ought 
to be produced, if the carbonic acid decomposed really passed into 
the state of carbonic oxide. 

We may perchance obtain a more convincing proof of the separa- 
tion of the elements of water, in analyzing plants grown in a soil 
absolutely without any organic matter capable of affording them hy- 
drogenous elements. 

In fact, if a plant, which is grown under such circumstances, con- 
tains hydrogen in any larger proportion than that which were neces- 
sary to transform its oxygen into water, we might conclude, with 
some certainty, that the elements of water had been separated ; the 
objection made on the score of the presence of manure would then 
be got rid of entirely. The analyses which have already been laid 
before the reader supply data for this investigation ; it has only to 
be ascertained whether, in the elements gained in the course of 
vegetation, the hydrogen is in excess with reference to the oxygen 
or not. The following table presents a summary view of our ex- 
periments : 

Oxygen HyOro^en Hydrogfen Hydrogen 

assimilated, assimilated, forining- water, in excess. 

Experiment 1. Trefoil 18.926 2.717 2.362 0.355 

Experiment 2. Peas 19.096 3.319 2.392 0.926 

Experiments. Wheat 9.386 1.204 1.173 0.030 

Experiment 4. Transplanted Trefoil . . 6.854 1.495 0.849 0.646 

Experiments. Oats 12.410 1.343 1.343 "" 

In the four first experiments, the hydrogen gained evidently ex- 
ceeds very sensibly the quantity required by the oxygen to form 
water. The experiment with the oats, indeed, presents an excep- 
tion ; but it must be remembered that here a loss of azote was ascer- 
tained. These analyses, therefore, appear to indicate an assimilation 
of hydrogen in the course of vegetation, in consequence of a decom- 
position of water analogous to that of carbonic acid, and very proba- 
bly effected by the same means. 



52 INORGANIC CONSTITUENTS. 



§111.— OF THE INORGANIC MATTERS CONTAINED IN 
PLANTS— THEIR ORIGIN— OF THE CHEMICAL 
NATURE OF SAP. 

When a plant is burned, there always remains a residue, which is 
commonly designated as the ash. Every part of a plant gives a 
residue of the same essential kind ; but it varies in its quantity 
and somewhat also in its composition. Equal weights of dry 
herbaceous plants leave more ashes than woody plants.* In a 
tree, the trunk gives more ash than the branches, and these give 
less than the leaves. f The residue left by the combustion is com- 
monly composed of salts — alkaline chlorides, with bases of potash 
and soda, earthy and metallic phosphates, caustic or carbonated lime 
and magnesia, silica, and oxides of iron and of manganese. Seve- 
ral other substances are also met with there, but in quantities so 
small that they may be neglected. 

The principles usually met with in the ashes of vegetables are 
always found in the soil which exercises the greatest influence upon 
the nature and quantity of the saline and earthy matters which re- 
main after the combustion of plants. Those which grow in a soil 
derived from silicious rocks, yield ashes that are richer in silica than 
those that are produced in a calcareous soil. But, according to M. 
de Saussure, the quality of the manure has a still more decided in- 
fluence on the nature of the ash than the geological constitution of 
the soil ; according to this observer, plants of the same species, 
which have grown upon a calcareous sand, and upon a granitic sand, 
contain the same kind of ashes, if they have been manured with the 
same dung ; and different species, although growing in the same 
earth, do not contain the saline and earthy constituents of their 
ashes in the same proportions. J 

* Kirwan, Memoirs of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. v. 
t Pertuis, Annates de Chimie, Ire s6rie, t. xix. 
i Saussure, Recherches chimiques, p. 283. 



ASHES. 



53 



QUANTITY OF ASHES CONTAINED IN THE DIFFERENT PARTS OP 
VEGETABLES, ACCORDING TO M. DE SAUSSURE.* 



NAME OF THE PLANT. 


Times when tak 
for analysis. 


^" Ashes. 


Oak leaves ..... 


10 May 


0,053 


Ditto do 




27 Septembe 


r 0,055 


Oak branches barked 




10 May 


0,004 


Bark of these branches . 






0,060 


Oak wood distinct from alburnum 






0,002 


Alburnum from same wood 






0,004 


Bark of same tree . 






0,060 


Liber of the preceding bark . 






0,073 


Leaves of poplar . 




May 


0,066 


Ditto ditto 




September 


0,093 


Trunk of ditto 






0,008 


Bark of trunk of ditto . 








0,072 


Spanish mulberry-tree wood . 








0,007 


Alburnum of mulberry . 








0,013 


Bark of ditto .... 








0,089 


Liber of ditto 








0,088 


Chestnut-tree leaves 




" 10 May 


0,072 


Ditto ditto 




23 July 


0,084 


Flowers of chestnut-tree 




10 May 


0,071 


Ripe chestnuts 




5 October 


0,034 


Peas flowering 






0,095 


Peas in pod .... 










0,081 


Beans in flower 










0,122 


Ditto in pod . 










0,066 


Bean straw .... 










0,115 


Beans 










0,033 


Jerusalem artichoke in flower 










0,137 


Ditto in seed . 










0,093 


Wheat straw .... 










0,043 


Wheat 










0,013 


Bran 










0,052 


Indian corn straw . 










0,084 


Indian corn .... 










0,010 


Barley straw .... 










0,042 


Barley 










0,018 


Oats 










0,031 


Pine-tree leaves (Jura) . 




20 June 


0,029 


Ditto ditto (Brocken) 




20 June 


0,029 


Pine-tree branches without leaves 


20 June 


0,015 



All these estimates of ashes refer to plants dried during several 
weeks in a stove heated to 25" cent. (77° Fahr.) By such drying, 
however, vegetable substances are very far from losing the whole 



* Saussure, Recherches chimiques, p. 283. 

5* 



54 



INORGANIC CONSTITUENTS. 



of the water which they contain. The quantities of ashes, there- 
fore, mentioned by M. de Saussure, if they be referred to vegetables 
absolutely dry, are somewhat too small. 

I present a few estimates of ashes from analyses which I have had 
occasion to make of some of those plants which are the usual sub- 
jects of cultivation with us. The drying here was always performed 
with care in an oil-bath heated to 110° cent. (:230° Fahr.)* 



Substance dried at 230" Falir. Aslies. 

Wheat straw 0,070 

Wheat 0,024 

Rye straw 0,036 

Rye 0,023 

Oat straw 0,031 

Oats 0,040 

Potatoes 0,040 

Beet-root 0,003 



Siiljstance dried at 230° Fahr. Ashes. 

Turnip 0,076 

Jerusalem artichoke 0,000 

Stems of ditto 0,028 

White peas 0,031 

Pea straw 0,113 

Clover hay 0,077 

Meadow hay 0,090 

After grass (meadow) 0,100 



We owe to M. Berthierf the following results of the incineration 
of different kinds of wood burned in the state in which they are gen- 
erally used. 



Kind of wood. Aslies. 

Fir 0,0083 

Birch 0,0100 

False ebony 0,0I2o 

Hazel 0,01.57 

White mulberry 0,0160 

Saint Lucia wood 0,0100 

Elder 0,0104 

Judea-tree 0,0170 

Oak (branches) 0,0250 

Oak bark 0,0(K)0 

Lime-tree 0,0500 



Kind of wood. Ashes. 

Poplar bark 0,0020 

Boxwood 0,0036 

Oak barked, ash, pine, birch, &c. 0,0040 

Thorn 0,00.50 

Aspintree 0,0060 

Oak bark 0,0120 

Black wood 0,0149 

Mahogany 0,0160 

Ebony 0,0160 

Oak (fagot) 0,0220 

Fearns 0,0450 



We possess several analyses of ashes from different parts of the 
same plants in the researches of MM. de Saussure and Berthier 
As the knowledge of these saline substances may prove highly im' 
portant in our agricultural applications, and as it further complete; 
in some sort, the facts that bear upon the chemical phenomena o; 
vegetation, I here add a table of the results obtained by the skilful 
analysts just quoted : 



r. 



* Ann.de Chimie, t. i. page 234. 3e. s6rie. 
t Trait6 des Essais, t. i, page 259. 



# 



ASHES. 



55 



•ssoi 


0{ C5 o ci ac -o -o o CO ^l r- 

O aOtC5>Jt^t-0DCOODCJ<?l 

o ooococooo_o 
o o o'cTo'o'cro'o cTo 


•sappiO oni^are 


0,003 

0,005 
0,007 
0,005 
0,010 
0,002 
0,002 
0,(105 
0,0(11 
0,005 
0,003 


•Bams 


lO O 00 O u-^ U'^ O C O LI 
O CJ C-J _ ^ O O X) — t- o 

o o^ o - vc c;_^ ©^ ^^ © LO CO 


■saiBnoq«3 iqj«a 


0,050 
0,375 

0,010 

0,010 
0,125 


■q^Bjod JO ajBuoqiBO 


-H r- rt oi CJ i-o -7* C5 -^ -o oo 
lO "1 ^ <^t '^., '^ '^ '-I '"_ ''I 't, 

© ©©©'©©o©©©"© 


•qsBjod JO apuoiqo 


© © © C5 © C) 'M >--. CO 1- CO 

CO oj-*©co©c;':'~o© 
© .-1 — ^©__© ©_ o © q_ ©.© 
© ©"©©"©■"©'©'=:'©'©'"© 


•qs^odjo aiBqding 


Siven 

along with 

tho 

chloride. 

Idem. 

0,020 

0,020 

0,020 

traces. 

0,013 
0,002 
0,035 
0,015 


■qsBjod JO aj^qdsoq J 


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Beans .... 
Wheat straw 
Selected wheat . 
Wheat bran 
Indian corn straw 
Indian corn 
Barley straw 
Barley in the husk 


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56 



INORGANIC CONSTITUENTS. 



In his researches upon the same subject, M. Berthier determined 
the relation of the insoluble to the soluble matters in each species 
of ash examined ; and the two kinds of salts were then analyzed 
separately. 



'S 
o 


Clayey, sandy and ferruginous. 

Very dry, argillaceous, calcareous soil. 

Sandy, somewhat calcareous. 
The same. 

Ditto. 

Ditto. 

Ditto. 

Ditto. 

Calcareous and argillaceous soil. 

Grown in the open field. 

Sandy clay. 

From Norway, part of a plank. 
Grown in a strong and calcareous soil. 
Silicious and calcareous sand. 


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Oak ... 

Oak bark 
Lime-tree 

Wood of St. Lucia . 
. Elder 
Judea-tree 
Hazel 

Chinese mulberry . 
White mulberry 
Ditto ditto . 
Orange or lance-wood 
'White oak 
Birch 

False ebony 
Fir . 

Wheat straw . 
Potato stems . 



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58 



INORGANIC CONSTITUENTS. 



COMPOSITION OF THE ASHES OF SEVERAL PLANTS ANALYZE! 
BY M. BERTHIER. 





Fern. 


Wheat 
straw. 


Horse-tail 
grass. 


Heath. 


Tansy. 


Observation?. 


Sulphate of potash . . • 
Chloride of potassium 
Carbonate of potash. • 
Silicate of potash .... 
gilica 


0,007 

0,730 
0,248 

0,010 
0,005 


0,004 
0,032 

0,130 
0,715 
0,096 

0,023 


0,120 
0,114 

0,505 
0,062 
0,144 
0,022 
0,030 


0,050 
0,012 
0,068 

0,375 
0,280 

0,130 
0,010 
0,014 
0,061 


0,033 
0,090 
0,167 

0,165 
0,434 

o,i'oo 

0,002 
0,007 
0,002 


The wheat 
straw was from 
a strong calca- 
reous doll. 

The tansy was 
from a saudy gar- 
den soil. 


Carbonate of lime 

Sulphate of lime 

Phosphate of lime . . . 

Magnesia 

Oxide of iron 

Oxide of manganese. . 



A remark made by Berthier, and arising out of the preceding 
analyses, is the absence of alumina in the constituent principles of 
the ashes examined. The results previously obtained by M. de 
Saussure fully confirm this remark ; and if in some cases traces of 
alumina were detected, the circumstance was attributed to the clay 
which might accidentally have adhered to the plants. According to 
M. Berthier the absence of alumina is probably owing to its insolu- 
bility in water, and its weak affinity for the organic acids. The solu- 
ble salts of alumina with mineral acids are, it is well known, unfa- 
vorable to vegetation, and in an arable soil they could not exist along 
with calcareous or alkaline carbonates : they would be immediately 
decomposed. 

However, alumina appears actually to have been observed in the 
state of salt in the juices of certain plants : lycopodium complanatum, 
an infusion of which is employed as a mordant in dyeing, contains 
tartrate of alumina ;* the same salt has been detected in verjuice ; and 
as we shall see presently, Yauquelin found acetate of alumina in the 
sap of the birch-tree. I may add, that in a considerable number of 
analyses of ashes, produced from plants and seeds of my own grow- 
ing, I always obtained traces of alumina : but I would not venture 
to affirm that the earth here was not accidental. 

Silica is met with in only very small quantity in the ashes of wood. 
It is found, on the contrary, in considerable proportion in the ashes 
of several annual and biennial plants, and more especially in those 
of the cereals. Sir Humphrey Davy found silica in the epidermis 
of the Indian rush. 

If Ave compare the ashes of the same species of wood grown in 
soils of different kinds, we see, says M. Berthier, that they may dif- 
fer very perceptibly ; which seems to establish the fact that the soil 
exercises a certain degree of iniluence on their constitution. Thus 
oak-wood from Roque des Arcs, grown in a decidedly calcareous 
soil, yielded ashes almost entirely consisting of carbonate of lime, 



* Berzeliu^, Trc.iu de Chimic, t. iv. p. 130, French translation. 



ABSORPTION OF SALTS. 59 

while those left by an oak from the department of la Somme, contain- 
ed much magnesia and phosphate of lime.* The ashes from a white 
mulberry of Nemours contained more than 0.10 of phosphoric acid, 
while scarcely any traces of it were found in those of a similar mul- 
berry from the calcareous soil of Provence. The most remarkable 
inference deducible from the analyses of M. Berthier, is that which 
is connected with the composition of the ashes yielded by trees 
growing- in the same soil. It is observed that, for analogous species, 
the asiies also bear the closest analogy ; and on the contrary, it is 
found that trees of very distinct genera yield ashes of quite a dif- 
ferent quality ; results which lead to this important conclusion, that 
{)lants possess the faculty of selecting in the soil the substances 
which are best suited to their special organizations. This is a point 
which we shall have an opportunity of discussing, when we come 
to treat of rotations of crops. 

The substances composing the ashes of vegetables, are not all in 
the state in which they existed in the vegetable tissue. In plants 
there constantly exist organic acids, which, in general, are combined 
with mineral bases. During the incineration of plants these organic 
acids are destroyed, and the result of their destruction is an alkaline 
carbonate, if the pre-existing acid was united with soda or potash ; 
a calcai'eous vegetable salt, again, yields carbonate of lime ; and a 
magnesian salt gives magnesia, from the well-known inability of this 
earth to retain carbonic acid at a high temperature. Thus, the 
greater part of the carbonates which enter into the composition of 
vegetable ashes, are formed by the mere fact of incineration. The 
salts which resist the action of a strong heat, as the phosphates, sul- 
phates, and chlorides, are the only ones which in the ashes retain 
the state in which they existed in the living plant. 

Water being the vehicle which must convey the mineral salts from 
the soil into the vegetable, we do not always perceive how they can 
penetrate. To explain the presence in plants of a salt so insoluble 
as the neutral phosphate of lime, M. de Saussure admits, from satis- 
iactory experiments, that vegetable juices contain the double phos- 
phate of potash and lime, and of potash and magnesia. f Besides, 
several bodies considered in chemistry as insoluble, are not so abso- 
lutely. Silica seems to possess a certain degree of solubility, — at 
least, M. Payen has met with it in considerable quantity in the wa- 
ter of the Artesian well of Grenelle, and in the water of the Seine. 
We know, moreover, that several insoluble earthy salts are dissolv- 
ed in virtue of the carbonic acid always contained in the waters 
with which the soil is soaked. Lastly, it is not improbable that 
certain insoluble salts have their origin in the plant itself, engender- 
ed there by the successive arrival and reciprocal action of soluble 
salts. 

It now remains for us to examine by what means saline substances 
are introduced into the tissues of vegetables, and within what limits 

* These ashes were from the carbon of the oak ; the insoluble part gave 0.14 of 
phosphate of lime, and 0.08 of magnesia. 

t Saussure, Recherches chimi(]ues, &c. p. 321. 



60 INORGANIC CONSTITUENTS. 

the water, which is essential to living plants, may be charged with 
them ; for it is within what may be called common experience, that 
saline solutions of certain degrees of concentration, oftentimes act 
injuriously on vegetation. 

The spongioles which terminate roots have too close a tissue to 
allow any thing but fluids to pass through them. All attempts to 
make them absorb solid bodies in a state of minute division, and held 
in suspension in water, have been ineffectual. In these attempts the 
spongioles have acted precisely like perfect filters, with which those 
that we employ in our laboratories cannot be compared. Further, 
the weakest solutions are not entirely absorbed by certain roots ; a 
kind of separation takes place ; a portion of the dissolved salt ap- 
pears to abandon the water at the moment of its penetrating the 
spongiole. This follows from the researches of M. de Saussure, 
instituted with a view to ascertain, 1st. If plants absorb substances 
dissolved in water in the same proportion as they absorb water ;* 
2dly. If plants make a selection among different substances held in 
solution in the same liquid. f 

In solutions severally containing eight ten-thousandths (0.0008) 
of each of the following substances — chloride of potassium, chloride 
of sodium, nitrate of lime, sulphate of soda, hydrochlorate of ammo- 
nia, acetate of lime, sulphate of copper, sugar-candy, gum arable, 
and extract of humus,J — several entire plants with their roots, of 
the polygonum persicaria, (lakeweed or redshanks,) which had lived 
for some time in distilled water, until their roots had commenced 
growing, were immersed. 

The plants lived in the shade during five weeks, throwing out roots 
in one of the solutions mentioned. They languished, without show- 
ing any appearance of growth in the solution of hydrochlorate of ■■ 
ammonia, and could only be kept alive in the sugared water, whicl*^' 
soon became changed, by renewing it frequently. They died at th^ 
end of from eight to ten days, in gum water, and in the solution of 
acetate of lime. They held out but for two or three days in the 
water which contained sulphate of copper. 

Observations precisely similar made on the bidens cannabina pre- 
sented the same results, with the sole difference, that this plant lived 
for much shorter times than the redshanks. 

To estimate in what proportion the substances dissolved were ab- 
sorbed, relatively to the water, M. de Saussure made use of the 
solutions previously employed ; but he brought the experiment to a 
close when the plants had taken up precisely half the liquid which 
was feeding them. Each solution fed a sufficient number of plants 
to allow of this condition being fulfilled in two days. Half of the 
liquid remaining after each experiment was analyzed, and the quan- 
tity of salt found therein, showed, by the difference between this 
and the quantity originally contained, the amount which had pene- 
trated the vegetable. Representing by one hundred parts the whole 

* Saussure, Recherches chimiques, &c. p. 247. t Ibid, page 253. 

t This entered into the solutions only in the proportion of tv\o ten-thousandths 
(0.0002.) 



ABSORPTlOiN OF SALTS. 61 

of the substance originally dissolved, it is evident that fifty of those 
parts must enter the plant, if the absorption of the saline substances 
be in proportion to that of the solvent. But the experiment proved, 
that in taking up half the volume of the liquid, the polygonum had 
absorbed but — 

15 parts of chloride of potassium, 



13 




chloride of sodium, 


4 




nitrate of lime, 


14 




sulphate of soda. 


12 




hydrochlorate of ammonia, 


8 




acetate of lime. 


29 




sugar, 


9 




gum. 


5 




extract of humus, 


47 




sulphate of copper. 


Under the same 


circ 


umstances the bident took — 


16 parts 


of chloride of potassium, 


15 




chloride of sodium. 


8 




nitrate of lime. 


10 




sulphate of soda, 


17 




hydrochlorate of ammonia. 


8 




acetate of lime, 


32 




sugar. 


8 




gum, 


6 




extract of humus. 


48 




sulphate of copper. 



It follows from these experiments that the plants absorbed some 
part of the different substances presented to them ; but without ex- 
ception, they took up the water in greater proportion than the mat- 
ters dissolved. 

On multiplying and varying these experiments, M. de Saussure 
always arrived at the same general results. The plants uniformly 
took up more of the alkaline than of the calcareous salts, and more 
sugar than gum, though the quantities of the different substances 
absorbed varied considerably. 

The sulphate of copper presented, in the course of these re- 
searches, an anomaly which is readily explained. We see that this 
salt, evidently injurious to vegetation, was taken up in a large dose. 
This arises from its corrosive action on the roots : sulphate of cop- 
per disorganizes the spongioles ; and these organs once destroyed, 
absorption takes place with more rapidity and in greater abundance. 
A root deprived of spongioles is in the condition of a stalk, or 
branch, the fresh section of which is immersed in a liquid. Obser- 
vation proves, in fact, that substances in a state of solution, which 
by reason of their viscidity are incapable of making their way into 
a healthy root, are, on the contrary, readily taken up by a cut stalk 
or branch, in quantity sufficient to dye it deeply, if it was a coloring 
matter that was presented for absorption. 

U 



62 



INOKGANIC CONSTITUENTS. 



In the preceding experiments, the solution contained only a single 
substance. In those which follow, M. de Saussure dissolved in the 
water two or three salts, a mixture of sugar and gum, &c., in order 
to ascertain whether the plants would make any selection from mixed 
solutions. 

In 25 fluid ounces of water two or three species of salt were dis- 
solved, the weight of each species being nearly 10 grains troy. 
Each ounce of water would therefore contain either |ths or |ths of 
a grain of saline or soluble matter. As in the preceding experi- 
ments, the plants were made to absorb precisely one half of the so- 
lutions. Analysis pointed out the quantity and the nature of the 
substances which remained in the liquid not absorbed, and conse- 
quently the salts which had penetrated the vegetable. 

In reducing this table, which exhibits the results obtained, the 
weight of each particular salt in the solution is represented by 100 
parts. 



Substances in the solution 
with which the experiment was made. 


Weight of the severa] sub- 
stances taken up by the 
Polygonum in imbibing 
one half of the solution. 


Weight of the several sub- 
stances taken up by the 
Bident in imbibing one 
half the solution. 


100 parts by weight. 

Sulphate of soda effloresced . 


12 


7 


Chloride of sodium 


22 


20 


Sulphate of soda effloresced . 


12 


10 


Chloride of potassium . 


17 


17 


Acetate of lime 


8 


5 


Chloride of potassium . 


33 


16 


Nitrate of lime 


4 


2 


Hydroehlorate of ammonia . 


16 


15 


Acetate of lime 


31 


35 


Sulphate of copper 


34 


39 


Nitrate of lime 


17 


9 


Sulphate of copper 


34 


56 


Sulphate of soda . 
Chloride of sodium 


6 
10 


13 
16 


Acetate of lime 


traces 


traces 


Gum ..... 


26 


21 


Sugar 


34 


46 



M. de Saussure confirmed these results in experimenting on the 
common peppermint, {mentha piperita,) Scotch pine, and common 
juniper. The substances absorbed in greatest proportion by the 
polygonum and bident were also those that were taken up in largest 
quantities by these plants. 



ABSOKPTIOiN OF SALTS. 63 

The section of the roots, even their destruction, favors, as we 
have already said, the introduction of the matters dissolved. Plants 
whose roots had been removed, no longer selected the substances 
dissolved in so striking a manner as they did previously ; after muti- 
lation they absorbed them almost indifferently, in larger doses, and 
perceptibly in the same proportion as the water which held them 
in solution. 

Roots with their spongioles entire, therefore, suffer one substance 
in solution to penetrate the plant in preference to another. The 
chlorides of potassium and of sodium, for instance, find entrance 
more readily than the acetate and nitrate of lime ; sugar more readily 
than gum ; and precisely as when isolated, are these substances, 
when combined, absorbed in much less proportion than the menstruum 
or water of solution. 

M. de Saussure is not disposed to admit that the preference which 
plants evince for certain salts, for certain dissolved substances, results 
from any particular faculty, from any special aihnity. He rather 
inclines to believe that it should be attributed to the degree of 
fluidity, or of viscidity communicated to the water by the different 
substances dissolved ; thus the acetate and nitrate of lime, with the 
same proportion of liquid, form more viscid solutions, which pass 
with more difficulty tb rough a filter, than the alkaline sulphates and 
chlorides ; and these latter salts in solution were absorbed by vege- 
tables in greater abundance than the calcareous salts. Gum, which 
imparts more viscidity to water than sugar, is also less capable of 
being absorbed. Finally, pure water, more fluid than any of the 
solutions tried, was also that which vegetables preferred to any 
other. 

In the results of the incinerations which we have mentioned, it is 
obvious that in many plants salts are met with in very small propor- 
tion. This circumstance has induced several physiologists to con- 
sider the mineral substances found in vegetables as purely accidental, 
and consequently unnecessary to their existence. M. de Saussure, 
however, observes that this scantiness is no true indication of their 
inutility, and he mentions that the phosphate of lime, which forms 
an element in the organization of an animal, does not probably 
amount to one five-hundredth part of the entire mass. We shall add, 
that as the phosphate of lime was met with by M. de Saussure in 
the ashes of all vegetables which he examined, and as all the analyses 
performed since the original labors of this celebrated chemist have 
tended to confirm the accuracy of his general conclusions, we have 
no ground for supposing that plants could exist without the interven- 
tion of saline matter. There are annual plants which, when burned, 
leave more than 10 per cent, of residue ; and vegetables cultivated 
in soils free from saline or alkaline matter, and watered with dis- 
tilled water, though they will live and ripen their seeds in some 
instances, still they never acquire the vigor which they possess when 
grown in a fertile soil. 

Duhamel ascertained that marine plants languish in soils destitute 
of chloride of sodium ; and this is so much the more readily con- 



64 INORGANIC CONSTITUENTS. 

ceived, as those plants which furnish ashes abounding in carbonate 
of soda, always contain organic acids combined with the alkaline 
base. Borage, the nettle, &c., thrive only in places where they 
meet with nitrates ; and it is easy to discover that plants when dried 
contain a notable quantity of either nitrate of potash or of lime. 
The vine more especially requires alkaline dressings, in order that 
the large quantities of potash taken from the soil in the tartrate of 
potash of the grape may be replaced. 

The organic acids, so different in their composition and in their 
properties, which are met with in the different vegetable families, 
are always found combined in the state of neutral or acid salts. The 
proportion of base combined in a plant with a vegetable acid may be 
readily ascertained from the ashes ; for by the effect of incineration 
the base passes into the state of an alkaline or earthy carbonate. 
The vegetable acids undoubtedly perform important functions in the 
organism of vegetables, and their formation probably depends on the 
influence of the bases with which they form salts. The nature of 
the oxide or base itself appears to be of little importance ; it is 
enough that it be present in the plant. It is known that certain bases 
may mutually replace each other, equivalent for equivalent. 

These principles assumed. Prof. Liebig draws a remarkable in- 
ference from the composition of the ashes of different kinds of wood ; 
namely, that for each vegetable family the sum of the oxygen of the 
bases combined with the organic acids will be a constant number ; 
or, in other words, the species of one and the same family will con- 
tain the same number of basic equivalents combined with vegetable 
acids. 

Thus, 100 parts of the ashes of a Breven pine-tree, analyzed by 
Saussure, contain : 

■ Carbonate of potash 3.60 Oxygen of the potash 0.411 

" lime 46.34 " lime 7.33V9.01ox. 

" magnesia 6.77 " magnesia 1.27) 

Carbonates 77.56.71 

The ashes of a pine from Mount La Salle yielded : 

Carbonate of potash 7.36 Oxygen of the potash 0-85 ) q „, 

lime 51.69 " lime 8.10 ) '^^ "*• 

" magnesia 0-00 

58.55 

M. Berthier found in the ashes of a fir-tree from Allevard the 
following bases : 

Potash and Soda 16.8 Oxygen 3.42) 

h\me 29.5 " 8.20V12.82 

Magnesia 3.2 " 1.20) 

49.5 

One part of the alkalies containing 1.20 of oxygen was combined 
with mineral acids, forming sulphates, phosphates, and a chloride 
The oxygen of the bases combined with the carbonic acid is conse- 
quently reduced to 11.62. 

The ashes of a Norway fir, according to the same analyst, con- 
taining : 



SAP. 65 

Potash 14.10 Oxygen 2.40"! 

Soda 20.70 " 5-30 lio ai „^,,„„„ 

Lime 12.30 " 3 45 W2. 84 oxygen. 

Magnesia 14.35 " 1.69J 

51.45 

In this ash the bases belonging to the inorganic salts contain 1.37 
of oxygen. The oxygen of the bases of the carbonates, or in other 
words of the bases which formed organic salts in the tree, therefore, 
becomes 11.47. The numbers 9.01 and 8.95 on the one hand, and 
11.62 and 11.47 on the other, which represent the quantity of oxy- 
gen of the whole of the bases in the ashes obtained from plants of 
the same species, differ so little, that they may be considered as 
identical. 

Accurate analyses of ashes of plants of the same species grown 
in soils of different kinds, will determine, says Prof. Liebig, whether 
the fact, deduced from the composition of the ashes of the pine and 
fir-tree, constitutes a definitive law.* 

Be this as it may, the utility of alkalies in vegetation cannot be 
a matter of doubt ; many usages in agriculture prove it in the 
clearest manner; and, according to M. Liebig, the fact of the forma- 
tion of the organic alkaloides in plants affords an additional proof 
of it. M. Liebig thinks that the organic alkalies have a particular 
tendency to form in the absence of mineral bases ; thus potatoes 
which germinate in cellars, under conditions where the soil cannot 
supply them with potash, soda, or lime, develop an organic alkali, 
solanine, which is not found in the tubers of this vegetable as usually 
cultivated.! In the cinchonas, quinine and cinchonine are combined 
with quinic acid ; but there is frequently found quinate of lime also. 
According to the same chemist, the latter base holds the place of a 
vegetable alkali in the organism ; the more prevalent it is in the soil, 
the less rich will the cinchona plant be in quinine and cinchonine. J 
These ingenious views certainly deserve the careful attention of 
physiologists ; they are calculated to add new interest to the study 
of the chemical constitution of the ashes of vegetables. 

The inorganic substances contained in vegetables evidently come 
from the soil. By growing seeds, as M. Lassaigne did, in flowers 
of sulphur, moistened with distilled water, the plant produced con- 
tained neither more nor less saline and earthy matter than was origi- 
nally present in the seed. 

The water absorbed by the roots, then, becomes charged during 
its stay in the ground with the various soluble substances which 
may be met with there, and which generally contribute to its fer- 
tility ; such especially are the salts derived from decomposed organic 
substances. Water charged with small quantities of the soluble 
substances diffused through the soil, constitutes the ascending sap. 
When it has penetrated the plant, immediately after its passage by 
the spongioles of the roots, perhaps even while traversing these 

* Liebig, Chimie Organique, Introduction, p. cxi. 
t Liebig, idem. p. cxiv. 



I Liebig, idem. 



6* 



6(j TRANSITION OF INORGANIC INTO ORGANIC MATTER. 

parts, the organic matters dissolved in the fluid appear to undergo 
important modifications ; for in the sap substances are detected 
which could not have existed in the water which moistened the soil. 
During its ascent the sap increases in density, as was ascertained 
by Mr. Knight, according to whom, the sap of an acer platanoides, 
taken at the level of the ground, has a density of 1.004 ; at 65^ feet 
above it this density becomes 1.008, and at 13 feet, 1.012. From 
this Mr. Knight concluded that the sap took up nutritive matter 
deposited in the vegetable tissues which it traversed in its ascent.* 
We have already seen that the sap, after being elaborated in the 
green parts of trees, takes a route the reverse of that which it fol- 
lowed at first, and we therefore spoke of this modified sap as the 
descending sap. It is very possible that in Knight's observations 
the liquid examined was a mixture of the two saps. 

We should not be over hasty in concluding that the action of the 
two species of sap was exerted separately in promoting the develop- 
ment of the plant ; it is very probable, as Dutrochet thinks, that the 
modified sap, by insinuating itself into the permeable tissue of the 
vegetable, is continually mixed with the ascending sap, in order to 
concur in promoting the growth of the buds.f The difficulty of 
obtaining each particular sap separately, if such a separation is really 
possible, prevents the analytical conclusions we have from possess- 
ing all the accuracy that seems desirable. 

Vauquelin has studied the sap of the birch-tree, of the hornbeam, 
of the beech, of the chestnut, and of the elm. 

The sap of the hornbeam {Carpi?ms sylvestris) was obtained in 
the months of April and May. At this period it is colorless and 
clear as water ; its taste is slightly saccharine ; its odor resembles 
that of whey ; it reddens turnsole paper. The sap of this tree 
contains water in very large quantity, sugar, extractive matter,| 
and free acetic acid, acetate of lime and acetate of potash, in very 
small quantity. 

This sap left to itself presents in succession all the phenomena of 
the vinous and then of the acetous fermentation. 1^ 

The sap of the birch-tree reddens turnsole intensely ; it is color- 
less, and has a sweet taste. The water which forms the greater 
part of it, holds in solution sugar, extractive matter, acetate of 
lime, acetate of alumina, and acetate of potash. 

When properly concentrated by evaporation, it ferments on the 
addition of yeast, and then yields alcohol on distillation. The pre- 
sence of the acetate of alumina may appear extraordinary in this 
sap, for this reason, that alumina has not yet been discovered in the 
ashes of the birch-tree. 

Sap of the beech, {Fagus sylvestris.) The analysis was made in 
March and April. The color of the sap was a tawny red ; it had 
the taste of an infusion of tanner's bark : it reddened turnsole slight- 

* Decandolle, Physiologie, t. i. p. 204. 

t Dutrochet, sur la Structure, &c. p. 36 

t Probably azotized. 

^ Vauquelin, Annales de Chimic, t. xxxi. p. 20, lere iitie. 



SAP. 67 

ly. It contained, in very small quantity, acetate of lime, acetate 
of potash, acetate of alumina, extractive matter, tannin, acetic acid, 
and gallic acid. 

The sap of the chestnut-tree, according to Yauquelin, who, for 
want of a sufficient quantity of the fluid, was able to study it but 
very superficially, contains mucilage, nitrate of potash, and the 
acetates of potash and lime. 

The sap of the elm was examined at three periods ; first, at the 
commencement of April, then some days after, and lastly, a month 
later. At the beginning of April its color was yellow, its taste 
sweet and mucilaginous ; it was scarcely acid. Analysis indicated : 
water 1027.90, acetate of potash 9.23, organic matter 1.06, carbo- 
nate of lime 0.80. 

At the second period it contained a little more extractive organic 
matter, and a little less carbonate of lime and acetate of potash. 
The last examination showed that these two salts had still further 
diminished in quantity. When exposed to the air, the sap of the 
elm undergoes decomposition, and becomes alkaline : the acetate of 
potash passes into the state of carbonate. 

M. Regimbeau found in the sap of the vine* bitartrate of potash, 
tartrate of lime, mucilage, and free caibonic acid. 

The sap of the maple-tree contains a very considerable quantity 
of sugar. In Canada, this sap, properly treated, yields sugar which 
is identical with that of the cane. The nature of the sap is subject 
to variations ; and Duhamel states, that at a certain season it loses 
its saccharine taste, and acquires an herbaceous flavor.f 

Liebig and Will detected the presence of ammoniacal salts in the 
sap of the maple and birch-tree, and in the tears of the vine. M. 
Biot examined the sap of a considerable number of trees, and ascer- 
tained that the sugar in them often exists in two different states ; iu 
that of cane-sugar, properly so called, and in that of grape-sugar, 
which, as chemists admit, difiers from the former only in the pos- 
session of an additional equivalent of water. The saps which M. 
Biot examined, contained besides some animal matter {albumine) 
and a gummy matter ; he found no free carbonic acid. The object 
which he had in view, namely, to study the changes which occur in 
the nature of sugar, did not lead M. Biot to notice the minute quan- 
tities of salts with organic acids which Vauquelin met with in saps. 

The trunk of a walnut-tree, tapped on the 11th of February, 
yielded a sap containing some cane-sugar. The saps of the syca- 
more, of the acer negundo, and of the lilac-tree, contained the same 
species of sugar ; but that of the birch-tree held in solution some 
grape-sugar. In the sycamore and birch-tree, M. Biot observed 
an extremely interesting fact. He ascertained, on felling these trees, 
that the greater portion of the descending sap was accumulated to- 
wards the middle of the trunk. That of the birch-tree was acid 
and saccharine ; the sap of that portion of the trunk which was 

* Journal de Pharmacie, t. xviii. p. M. 

t Annales de I'Agriculture, Francaisc, t. v. 2enie s^rie, p. 339. 



68 TRANSITION OF INORGANIC INTO ORGANIC MATTER. 

buried in the g^round, contained no sugar, but a substance possessing 
the principal characters of gum.* It was probably an effect of the 
season ; for Knight states, that he never could discover the least 
trace of saccharine matter during winter in the alburnum either of 
the stem or of the roots of the sycamore. f 



SAP OF THE BAMBUSA GUADUAS. 

The guaduas grows in the hot and marshy countries of the tropi- 
cal regions ; this grass frequently attains the enormous height of 
from 65 to 100 feet. Its stem, which is hollow, is divided through 
its entire length into joints spaced rather regularly at distances of 
from 11 to 12 inches. Each joint indicates ihe presence of a woody 
partition, which seems to divide the stem of the guaduas into so 
many super-imposed tubes. On perforating it immediately above a 
knot, a clear limpid fluid flows out, which cannot be distinguished 
from the purest water. This indeed is a store of water of which 
travellers have frequently availed themselves. This sap, as I have 
been assured by the inhabitants of the countries where I observed 
the guaduas, never completely fills the hollow space included be- 
tween two joints. Analysis satisfied me that the sap of the guaduas 
is almost pure water. Re-agents detected merely traces of sulphates 
and chlorides. On evaporating a considerable quantity of it, I was 
able to discover, independently of these traces of soluble salts, a 
very small proportion of organic matter and of silica ; the latter sub- 
stance is probably the element which predominates in the sap of the 
guaduas. 

SAP OF THE CANANA PLANT, (muSA PARADISICA.) 

The sap of the banana possesses a well-marked astringent taste ; 
it reddens tincture of litmus. Immediately after escaping from the 
plant, it is limpid and colorless, like water ; nevertheless, it possesses 
the property of imparting a yellow color to stuffs immersed in it. 
Exposed to the air it becomes turbid, and throws down flocculi of a 
dirty rose color. It is to the action of oxygen that this deposite is 
owing ; for it takes place only in contact with the air. After the 
formation of this deposite, the sap no longer colors stuffs immersed 
in it. From a chemical examination which I instituted of the sap 
of the banana, during my sojourn on the banks of the Magdalena, I 
think I may state that it contains gallic acid, acetic acid, chloride 
of sodium, salts of lime and potash, and silica. 

The sap of vegetables, elaborated during its passage through the 
leaves, acquires additional consistence. It generally contains pecu- 
liar principles, which are the result of this elaboration, and these 
now constitute the liquid which is usually designated by the name of 
the particular juice of the plant from which it is procured. This 

* Annales du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, t. ii. 

* Knight, quoted in Annales de rAgricultiire Krancaise, t. v. 2e serie, p. 338. 



SAP. 69 

proper juice or sap is generally obtained by making an incision which 
penetrates a little below the bark. 

The characters and properties of the elaborated or descending sap, 
are extremely various. It may, however, be divided into milky sap, 
saccharine sap, gummy sap, and resinous sap, according to the na- 
ture of the juices dissolved or suspended in the liquid. As several 
of the peculiar juices of vegetables contain principles employed in 
the arts or in medicine, they have been more carefully studied, and 
their history is more complete than that of the ascending saps. I do 
not propose to give a monograph of these juices ; in this place I 
shall only mention those which have been examined with some care. 

MILKY SAPS. 

The milky saps, as their name indicates, have the appearance of 
milk ; they owe this milky appearance to globules of insoluble mat- 
ter, minutely divided, and suspended in a liquid. 

SAP OF THE PAPAW-TREE, (CARICA PAPAYA.) 

The carica papaya grows in tropical regions. The sap, which is 
extracted from the fruit by incision, is white, and excessively vis- 
cous. In a specimen of this sap, which came from the Isle of France, 
Vauquelin found water in large quantity, and also a matter having 
the chemical properties of animal albumen,* and lastly fatty matter. 

I took occasion to verify the correctness of the results obtained by 
Vauquelin, on the milk of the fruit of the carica papaya, during my 
sojourn at Caraccas, where I examined the sap which flowed from 
the trunk of the tree itself. This sap is less milky, and much more 
fluid than that which flows from the fruit ; it had the appearance of 
milk-and-water. Its odor is rather nauseating, even when coming 
from the plant ; its taste slightly sour. When exposed to the air it 
soon coagulates. It contains a considerable portion of matter, which 
may be compared to animal fibrine, and sugar, wax, and resin, in 
small quantities. 

Evaporated and burnt, it leaves a saline residue. This juice is 
employed by the inhabitants for medical purposes. 

SAP OF THE COW-TREE. 

Among the number of astonishing vegetable productions observed 
in the equinoctial regions, is a tree which yields a milky juice in 
abundance, similar in its properties to the milk of animals. At the 
time I left Europe, M. de Humboldt expressly recommended me to di- 
rect my attention to the milk of the cow-tree. A short time after my 
arrival in the Cordilleras, on the shore of Caraccas, M. Rivero and 
myself were able to comply with the wishes of the distinguished 
traveller.! 

The milk we examined came from the Palo de Leche, the milk- 
tree, which is extremely common in the environs of Maracaibo. 

* Vauquelin, Annates de Chimie, t. xlix. p. 219, Ire s6rie. 

t Rivero and Boussingauk, Annales de Chim. et de Phys. t. xxxiii. p. 229, 2e s^rie. 



70 TRANSITION OF INORGANIC INTO ORGANIC MATTER. 

Vegetable milk possesses the same physical characters as that of 
the cow, with this sole difference, that it is, in a slight degree, vis- 
cous ; its flavor is agreeable, slightly balsamic. With respect to 
chemical properties, these differ perceptibly from those which are 
peculiar to animal milk. Acids do not curdle it ; alcohol scarcely 
coagulates it. 

Under the action of gentle heat, light pellicles are seen to form 
on the surface of vegetable milk. On evaporating it over a water 
bath, an extract is obtained resembling fritters ; and if the action of 
the fire be continued for a certain time, oily drops are observed, 
which increase in proportion as the water is dissipated, and ulti- 
mately form a liquid of an oily appearance, in which a fibrinous 
substance floats, which dries and becomes tough in proportion as the 
temperature increases. An odor is then diffused, exactly like that 
of meat frying in fat. 

By the mere action of heat, then, the milk of the Palo de Leche 
is separated into two distinct portions : the one fusible, of a fatty 
nnture, the other fibrinous, and presenting all the characters of ani- 
mal substances. 

If the evaporation of vegetable milk is not carried too far, the 
fatty matter may be obtained unchanged ; it then possesses the fol- 
lowing properties ; — it is white, translucent, sufficiently solid to 
resist the impression of the finger; it fuses at 140° (Fahr. ;) boiling 
alcohol dissolves it completely ; it is equally soluble in potash. 

The fibrinous matter presents all the characters of fibrine, obtained 
from the blood of animals ; for this reason we have- called it fibrine. 
In fact, when put on a hot iron, it swells up, fuses, and becomes 
carbonized, exhaling the odor of grilled meat. Treated with weak 
nitric acid, it gives out nitrogen gas ; by distillation, it disengages 
ammoniacal vapors in abundance. 

The presence and nature of this animalized matter in the milk 
of the cow-tree, explains how this milk acquires the odor of old 
cheese on becoming changed. We considered the fatty matter of 
the milk as analogous to beeswax ; I may even say that we made 
wax-candles of it. However, the property of being completely dis- 
solved in hot alcohol, combined with its ready solubility in potash, 
establish a well-marked difference between it and the wax of insects. 
This is a question which can only be completely cleared up by ele- 
mentary analysis, and we were altogether without the means of 
making any minute examination of the wax of vegetable milk. 

In the water which holds the wax and animal matter in suspension, 
we met with some saline substances and a free acid, the nature of 
which we were unable to determine. We did not succeed in detect- 
ing the presence of caoutchouc in vegetable milk. According to 
our researches this milk should contain : 

1 . A fatty substance similar to beeswax ; 

2. An animal substance, similar to animal fibrine ; 

3. Water, salts, a free acid, and a little sugar. 



.SAP. 71 

By incineration, we obtained ashes from the milk in which were 
found phosphate of lime, lime, magnesia, and silica. 

During their excursions in the Cordilleras, the inhabitants fre- 
quently drink the milk of the cow-tree. M. de Rivero and myself 
also used it during our sojourn at Maracaibo. 

The tree which produces the milk which we examined, is, accord- 
ing to M. de Humboldt, the galactodendron dulce, of the family of 
the verticas, or fig-trees. But several trees are known in the 
mountains along the coast, which yield a milky juice, and which 
are often confounded with that just described. For instance, in the 
environs of Maracaibo, according to M. Desvaux,* the clusia galac- 
todendron yields an abundance of very pleasant vegetable milk ; 
this milk, however, does not seem to contain much animalized matter ; 
at least it does not putrefy perceptibly, and instead of the waxy 
matter, a substance much less fusible and of a resinous character is 
procured from it. 

MILKY SAP OF THE HURA CREPITANS, (aJUAPAR.) 

The sap of the hura crepitans is dreaded, and not without good 
reason ; it is enough to be exposed to the emanations of this milky 
juice, when recently extracted, to be seriously affected by it. 
The use which is made of it, to poison the water of rivers, in 
order to obtain the fish, is a sufficient indication of its pernicious 
qualities.! 

This vegetable sap would perfectly resemble that of the cow-tree, 
if it were not slightly yellowish. It has no smell ; its taste, which 
is very little marked at first, soon causes very violent irritation. It 
reddens the color of turmeric ; mineral acids produce in it a white 
and viscous curd ; the surrounding fluid is clear and of a yellow 
color. Left to itself, the milky sap of the hura crepitans yields all 
the products of the putrefaction of caseum. It contains: 1. An 
azotized substance similar to gluten, or caseum. 2. A vesicating 
oil. 3. A crystallized substance, having an alkaline reaction. 4. 
Malate of potash. 5. Nitrate of potash. 6. A salt of lime, (the 
malate ]) 7. An odorous azotized principle. 

MILKY SAP OF THE POPPY, (oPIUM.) 

The milky sap which, by concreting, furnishes the opium of com- 
merce, is obtained by making longitudinal incisions in the capsules 
of the poppy. The operation takes place before the fruit is ripe, 
and after the fall of the flower. 

* Renseifrncmeiits communiques par M. Adolphe Brongniart. 

t Rivero et Boussingault, Annates de C'him. et de Phys. t. xviii. p. 430, 2e stric. 

What I shall now state may give an idea of the energy with which this millvy juice 
acts on the animal economy : when M. Rivero and myself examined the milk of the 
hura crq>itmts, we heeanx! affected with crj-sipelas ; the affection continued for sev- 
eral days. The millt had heen sent to us in guaduas by Dr. RouUn ; the messenger 
who brouglit it was seriou^ly affected hy it : and along the road the inhabitants of the 
houses where he lod-jed felt the s;;ine cifect-. 



72 TRANSITION OF INORGANIC INTO ORGANIC MATTER. 

The concrete sap is brown, firm, of an acrid and bitter taste,''and 
of a peculiar sickening odor. Opium contains a number of principles, 
the study of which has exercised for a considerable time the inge- 
nuity of the most skilful chemists. It was in this substance that 
Sertuerner found the first vegetable alkali which was discovered, 
morphine. After numerous trials made on opium, it was found to 
contain : — 1. Morphine, (vegetable alkali.) 2. Codeine, (the same.) 
3. Narceine. 4. Meconine. 5. Para-morphine. 6. Pseudo-mor- 
phine. 7. Meconic acid. 8. Resin. 9. Fatty matters. 10. Caout- 
chouc. 11. Gum. 12. Bassorine. 13. Ulmine. 14. Woody sub- 
stance. 15. Mineral salts with bases of lime, magnesia, and potash. 

MILK OF THE PLUMERIA AMERICANA. 

The plumeria, when one of its branches is broken, yields a con- 
siderable quantity of milky juice. At the time when I examined 
this juice, the tree was entirely destitute of leaves. The milk of the 
plumeria is perfectly white ; it is very fluid when it flows from the 
plant, but soon after deposites a crystalline sediment. The taste is 
slightly bitter, and it has an acid reaction. The milk of the plumeria 
appears to contain no animalized matter. I was only able to detect 
a very large proportion of resinous matter held in solution or sus- 
pended in water ; and indications of potash, lime, and magnesia, 
combined with an organic acid. 

SAP OF THE CAOUTCHOUC TREE. 

Caoutchouc is found in the sap of many trees, and in that of a 
great number of herbaceous plants ; but it is the hoEvea caoutchouc, 
the jatropha elastica, peculiar to South America ; the Jicus Indica, 
and the artocarpus integrifolia, which grow in the East Indies, that 
yield the caoutchouc so well known in commerce, and which has 
been converted to so many useful purposes in the arts. 

The caoutchouc tree is particularly common in Choco and forests 
near the equator. To obtain the elastic gum, the Indians incise the 
tree below the bark, when there issues a copious discharge of milky 
sap, which will remain fluid for a considerable time, if it be kept 
from contact with the air. I have seen it carried to great distances, 
in wooden vessels hermetically closed. When spread out in thinnish 
layers, it soon coagulates, and acquires the singular elasticity which 
characterizes caoutchouc. The action of the oxygen of the air may 
possibly have some influence in producing this coagulation, un- 
less what I am about to state be the eff*ect of a prompt evaporation 
of the water of the sap. I have often made a small incision in the 
trunk of an hoevea from which milk immediately flowed, and by rea- 
son of its viscidity, trickled down the tree in a stream of a certain 
thickness ; this milk was at first extremely fluid, but after from one 
to two minutes' exposure to the air, it suddenly coagulated, so that 
on raising the drop from the lower end, I obtained a long string or 
riband of perfectly elastic caoutchouc. 



SAP. 73 

In Guiana the Indians fashion the caoutchouc into the bottles 
which are so common in trade : they make a clay mould, and this 
they cover by immersing it in the milk freshly drawn from the tree ; 
they allow it to coagulate, which it does very speedily, especially if 
it be exposed to the smoke of a wood fire. This first layer being 
coagulated, they continue the same process until the desired thick- 
ness is attained. The mould is then broken and taken out piece-meal 
from the interior of the caoutchouc bottle which has been formed. 

The workmen of Quito, who are very dexterous in manufacturing 
caoutchouc, make shoes and buskins of it, by applying it in the 
milky state over moulds of the proper fashion. They also render 
tissues impervious by spreading it in the same state between two 
pieces of stuff or clolh; the interposed milk becomes coagulated, and 
forms a thin elastic lamina, very preferable to the caoutchouc applied 
by the aid of solvents. 

The Indians of Choco sometimes procure this substance by felling 
the tree, and receiving the milk, which then flows in a stream, into 
large wooden moulds, generally formed from a hollow stem of the 
guaduas. By keeping the mould open, the milky mass coagulates 
a^er some time. Several of these masses of caoutchouc, which 
were brought to me by the Indians of the Chami nation, were but 
slightly elastic ; their color also was extremely deep. It is probable, 
that by proceeding in this way, the milky juice is mixed with large 
quantities of the internal sap which is much less milky. 

Several trees in the valley of the Magdalcna which bear the name 
of caoutchouc, which, however, are neither the hoevea, nor the ja- 
tropha, also yield a coagulable juice, which may be confounded with 
the elastic gum ; it is, I believe, caoutchouc combined with a large 
quantity of wax, and probably also of resin ; this caoutchouc pos- 
sesses but little elasticity. 

M. Faraday found in the milk of the hcevea, in 100 parts : 

Water 56 

Caoutchouc 32 

Bitter azoti/.ed matter soluble in water and alcohol 7 

A subst-ince soluble in water and alcohol (sugar) 3 

100 
As this milk will remain fluid for a considerable time, provided it 
be protected from the air, advantage has been taken of tliis property 
to convey it to Europe. It is sent in well-filled, hermetically-sealed 
bottles. 

GUMMY AND RESINOUS SAPS. 

I place under this head the saps of those trees which yield gum 
from incisions in their trunk, as the acacia vera and acacia Arabica, 
which grow in Arabia, and from which gum-arabic is obtained ; 
acacia Senegal, which also furnishes a species of gum. In general, 
in very warm countries, the mimosas produce gummy matters in 
abundance. 

The elaborated sap of the coniferae and terehinthaceae consists 
chiefly of resinous matter, dissolved in an essential oil composed of 

7 



74 TRANSITION OF INORGANIC INTO ORGANIC MATTER. 

carbon and liydrogen, similar to the essence of turpentine. The 
balsams of Peru and Tolu are obtained by incising the bark of the 
trees which produce them. In Choco, where I have seen numerous 
incisions made in the lower part of the trunk of the Tolu trees, the 
balsam flows slowly, on account of its thickness ; it does not, ap- 
. parently, contain any water. 

SACCHARINE SAPS. 

The sap oi ihe fraxinus orwM5, and that of the fraxinus rotundi- 
folia, yield manna on drying or becoming thick. The sap of several 
palms contains a considerable quantity of saccharine matter. At 
Java, for instance, crystalline sugar is extracted from the arenga 
saccharifera. In several places, the sap of palm-trees is subjected 
to fermentation in order to prepare vinous liquors. 

The Cocos buiyracea {palma de vino) is very common in the valley 
of the Rio-Grande de la Magdalena. From a superficial examina- 
tion which I made of it, its sap contains sugar, an azotized matter, 
and some soluble salts. 

By fermentation, it produces a vinous liquor sufficiently alcoholic 
to produce intoxication. In order to procure it, the natives of 
Benadillo first fell the tree, taking care, when it is down, to give the 
trunk a slight inclination from the summit towards the lower extremity 
or foot. They then make a hole towards the base of the trunk suf- 
ficiently large to hold from fifteen to eighteen pints, the orifice of 
which they plug up with leaves. The woody tissue, to all outward 
appearance, contains but little moisture ; but in ten or twelve hours 
after the operation, the cavity is found full of a liquid, of a well- 
marked vinous odor, and of a sourish taste, owing probably to the 
carbonic acid which is disengaged in large quantity. The wine thus 
obtained is rather agreeable. A palm-tree of from 50 to 60 feet in 
height, and of which the trunk towards the base is from 20 to 24 
inches in diameter, will yield from twenty to thirty pints of wine in 
twenty-four hours during ten or twelve days. The wine must not 
be allowed to remain too long after it has collected, otherwise it 
becomes sour. 

Sugar is far from being the only useful substance afforded by 
palms. There are several of these trees which are truly astonishing 
by reason of the many important uses to which they may be applied ; 
and it is not without reason that the missionaries have styled the 
palm, the tree of Providence, the bread of life. Such more espe- 
cially is the Cocos mauritia, which grows in the plains of the Apure 
and Oronoko ; its young shoots serve as aliment ; from its fruit, 
while still green, a farinaceous food may be obtained ; and when 
perfectly ripe, it yields oil in abundance. Hammocks and various 
kinds of cloth are made of the fibrous portion of the bark of this 
tree ; the young leaves serve to make hats, mats, and sails for ships ; 
the tissue which surrounds the fruit furnishes the Indians with 
clothing ; the sap ferments and yields wine ; the trunk before fruc- 
tification contains an amylaceous marrow, of which bread is made ; 
this marrow, on becoming putrid, produces a vast multitude of large 



CHEMICAL CONSTITI'TION OF VEGETABLE'S. 75 

white worms which the Indians value as a most delicate dish ; finally, 
the woody part of the mauritia affords excellent timber for building. 
It is not necessary to enumerate farther the principles produced 
by vegetables ; we must now study them in reference to their ele- 
mentary composition. 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 

From the very first period of vegetable life, during germination, 
the immediate principles which constitute the seed are destroyed or 
changed. The young plant, in developing its organs, creates new 
substances, which are added to the tissues already existing, so as to 
complete or extend them. In order to account for the productions 
or changes which take place in the organism of vegetables, it is ex- 
pedient first to study the intimate nature and general characters of 
the materials which compose them. Unfortunately, in the present 
state of science, this study is as yet but little advanced ; and, not- 
withstanding the efforts which chemical physiology has made in 
recent times, there still remain numerous and important questions 
to be solved. 

Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, azote, combined in some cases with 
minute quantities of sulphur or phosphorus, are the only elements 
required by nature to give rise to that almost endless variety of 
vegetable substances, so different in their properties, as well as in 
their uses. In the food which sustains the life of animals, as in the 
virulent poison which destroys it, these same elementary bodies are 
always found combined in various and dissimilar proportions. 

The immediate principles of the vegetable kingdom may be 
divided into three groups, if we look to the number of the elements 
which constitute these principles as they exist in the several bodies : 

1°. Quarternary, containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, azote. 

2°. Ternary, containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. 

3°. Binary, containing carbon and hydrogen, or carbon and oxy- 
gen, or carbon and azote. 

It is by the examination of the immediate principles which exist 
in the seed, that we should approach the study of the composition 
of vegetables ; and this the more, as we shall find these principles 
diffused throughout the organs of plants. Once we shall have fully 
considered their properties and their elementary composition, it will 
be sufficient merely to indicate where they are to be met with in 
the organism. 



76 CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 



§ 1. QUARTERNARY AZOTIZED PRINCIPLES OF 
VEGETABLES. 

It has now for some considerable time been ascertained that 
several seeds contain azote, inasmuch as azotized matters, nearly 
similar to those obtained from the tissues of animals, can be extract- 
ed from them. M. Gay-Lussac expressed this fact in the most 
general manner, by laying it down as a law that every seed contains 
a principle abounding in azote.* 

Azotized animal matters, when heated in close vessels, yield an 
ammoniacal product ; and to satisfy ourselves of the generality of 
the law laid down by Gay-Lussac, all that is necessary is to subject 
any seed whatever to dry distillation. 

We do not always, indeed, obtain an ammoniacal liquor immedi- 
ately in this way ; rice, for instance, when heated in a retort, yields 
a product having an acid reaction ; but it is easy to demonstrate in 
the acid liquor, the presence of ammonia by the addition of lime, 
■which at once sets it free. Peas, kidney-beans, in a word all the 
legumens hitherto experimented on, yield a liquor directly, having a 
highly alkaline reaction. These differences, in the products of the 
dry distillation of seeds, are explained in a very natural way. 
Throwing the husk out of the question, we may consider a seed as 
formed of two parts ; one, non-azotized, possessing a ternary com- 
position, and yielding by the action of heat a liquid with an acid re- 
action ; the other having a quarternary composition, consequently 
azotized, and yielding an ammoniacal liquor, so that the acid or alka- 
line reaction of the product, really depends on the predominance of 
one or other of these two distinct ingredients. 

M. Gay-Lussac subjected every kind of seed he could procure to 
distillation, and all yielded ammonia either directly or indirectly. I 
shall add, that the numerous analyses which I have had occasion to 
make for "several years back support the generality of the principles 
laid down by the above celebrated chemist. M. Payen has come to 
the same conclusion, and has further shown that at the period of 
germination the azotized matter of seeds is determined towards the 
parts that are most recently organized. Thus the spongioles situ- 
ated at the extremities of the radicles constantly produce ammoniacal 
vapors during their destructive distillation by heat, even thougli pro- 
ceeding from seeds which, when distilled, yield an acid liquor where- 
in ammonia only becomes sensible on the addition of lime. f 

The animalized or azotized substance is extracted readily enough 
from certain seeds, and has consequently been known to exist in 
them for a very long time. It is found in wheat, for example, in dif- 
ferent states, and is obtained with great ease by simply kneading a 
mass of dough under a small stream of water by which the starch is 
carried off, and by and by there remains in the hand a grayish highly 

* Gay-Lussac, Annales de Chimie et de Physique, t. liii. p. 110, 2e s6rie. 
t Payen, Mtimoiie sur la composition chimique des vtgetaux, p. 7. 



AZOTIZED PRINCIPLES. 77 

elastic substance of a peculiar heavy odor ; this is the gluten of 
chemists. By this simple process of analysis, however, we are en- 
abled in many cases to estimate the quality of a sample of flour with 
reference to its richness in gluten, a substance which is rightly 
considered as the most essential among the nutritive elements of the 
cereals. 

The washings collected and allowed to stand, soon become clear : 
the starch which was suspended in the liquid subsides, accompanied 
by flakes of an animalized matter. If the clear liquor be decanted 
and boiled, a white froth appears upon its surface, which, skimmed 
off, is found to have the appearance of coagulated white of egg, and 
which, in fact, has all the cbaracters of animal albumen. The water 
from which the albumen is solidifled, necessarily contains all the 
soluble substances of the flour. On evaporation, it leaves substances 
similar to gum and sugar, and traces of saline matters. 

With the exception of the starch, which contains very little for- 
eign matter, the different substances obtained by this process of 
washing are far from being in a state of purity. I have said that all 
seeds contain fatty substances, but in the products of the operation 
just described, no oily matter was detected. As it cannot be discov- 
ered in perceptible quantity in starch, nor in the substances soluble 
in water, it must remain attached to the gluten ; and this is actually 
the case. The gluten, the coagulated albumen then, are not pure 
proximate principles ; fat or oil may be obtained from them ; and 
further, by examining common gluten carefully, we learn that it con- 
tains several azotized substances, which differ from one another. By 
boiling crude gluten with alcohol we ultimately obtain a fibrous gray- 
ish residue, called by M. Dumas vegetable fibrine. On cooling, the 
alcoholic liquor lets fall a substance which in its properties resembles 
the caseum or curd of milk. Lastly, if the cold alcoholic solution 
be concentrated, a pultaceous substance separates from it, called by 
Messrs. Dumas and Cahours glutine. 

Analysis, accordingly, indicates the presence of four azotized sub- 
stances in wheat ; and when these are all combined in the mass of 
gluten obtained by washing a lump of dough, they retain fatty mat- 
ters, from which they may be freed by means of alcohol and ether. 
The following, according to MM. Dumas and Cahours, is the com- 
position of the azotized principles of wheat, dried at 140 centig. 
(284° F.)* 

Carbon, Hydrog-en. Azote. Oxyo^en^Sulph. and 

Phosphorus. 

Fibrine 53.2 7.0 16.4 23.4 

Albumen 53.7 7.1 15.7 20.5 

Caseine (caseum) 53.5 7.1 16.0 23.4 

Glutine 53.3 7.2 15.9 23.6 

Legumine. Some vegetables, particularly some seeds, contain a 
substance different from any of those just described. This M. Bra- 
connot was the first to notice in the seeds of the family of the Le- 
guminosffi, and it has been since detected by Dumas and Cahours in 

♦ Dumas ct Ciihoiirs, Aniialc.s do Chimic ct ilu Physiriuf, p. 3G0, 3e scric. 

7* 



78 



CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 



many different seeds. Legtwiine, which plays an important part in 
the nutrition of animals, is obtained by digesting a quantity of pea 
or bean meal, or crushed peas or heans in tepid water for two or 
three hours ; the pulp is then ponnded in a mortar, and afterwards 
mixed with its own weight of cold water ; after one hour's macera- 
tion it is pressed through a cloth. On standing, the liquid throws 
down some fecula. Filtration is employed to have the liquor per- 
fectly clear; upon. which a quantity of acetic acid diluted with from 
eight to ten times its weight of water is gradually added, when a 
snowy flocculent precipitate of legumine falls. This is collected in 
a filter and washed with water ; the legumine is then treated with 
alcohol, dried, and pulverized, preparatory to digestion in ether, in 
order to free it from fatty matters. 

Legumine thus prepared has a pearly or lustrous appearance. It 
is insoluble in alcohol and ether. Cold water dissolves it in large 
quantity. On boiling the watery solution, legumine is coagulated 
and falls in flocculi analogous to those formed by albumen under the 
same circumstances. Weak hydrochloric acid throws down legu- 
mine from its watery solution like the acetic acid ; the concentrated 
acid, again, dissolves it, acquiring a violet tint, a character which 
also belongs to albumen ; but that legumine is actually distinct from 
albumen is proved by the circumstance of its being precipitated by 
phosphoric acid with three atoms of water, which albumen is not. 
The alkalies dissolve legumine at common temperatures. 

COMPOSITION OF LEGUMINE, OBTAINED FROM DIFFERENT SEEDS.* 







e^i 


O'S 


a-a 


_ . 




JS 


>. ^ 


Carbon .... 


H 


^1 




32 




Q^ 


a 


13 g 


50.9 


50.9 


50.7 


50.8 


50.7 


50.5 


50.5 


.50.7 


Hydrogen. . 


6.7 


6.7 


6.7 


6.7 


6.7 


6.9 


6.7 


6.8 


Azote 


18.8 


18.6 


18.8 


18.6 


18.8 


18.2 


18.2 


17.6 


Oxygen... . 


23.6 


23.8 


23.8 


23.9 


23.8 


24.4 


24.6 


24.9 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 



These same azotized compounds, or substances differing but little 
from them, are very probably those that are now recognised as dis- 
tributed through the whole body of every vegetable. M. Payen, 
after having ascertained the presence of these substances in the 
radicles and spongioles, proved it in nearly all the organs. The 
examination was extended to a great number of species of different 
families. The ascending sap of a fig-tree, (ficus carica,) that of the 
lime-tree, of the black poplar, of the vine, have all yielded ammoniacal 
vapors under the influence of fire ; so also do the buds, the young 
leaves, the stigmas, the anthers, &ic.\ Thus, according to M. Payen, 
the nutritious juices which ascend from the extremities of the radi- 
cles to the terminal points of the leaves, carry an azotized principle 

* Dumas et Cahours, .\nnales He Chimie et de Physique, t. vi., p. 423, 3e s6rie. 
t Payen, Memoire sur les d6veloppemens des veg6tau.\, p. 36. 



qXIARTEKNARY OR AZOTIZED PRINCIPLES. 79 

which accumulates in all the growing organs, at the same time that 
it is deposited within the entire extent of the canals which the sap 
traverses. It might, therefore, be supposed that in the latter situa- 
tion the azotized substance was associated with matters of ternary- 
constitution, so as to form membranes and tissues. But from the 
various organs of the many species studied, M. Payen succeeded in 
dissolving out, by means of alkalies, and entirely eliminating the 
animalized substances, without causing the slightest rent or erosion 
in the tissues perceptible with the microscope ; whence it may 
fairly be concluded, that if these substances everywhere and always 
accompany the young tissues of plants, they still form no integral 
part of them.* The animalized matter seems consequently to pre- 
serve a kind of independence with reference to the organs which 
secrete, which convey, and which contain it ; it preserves a sort of 
mobility which allows of its displacement. And it was in fact neces- 
sary that this should be so ; for as the period of maturity approaches 
we see the azotized substance carried more particularly towards the 
generative organs, and finally become fixed, as it were, and accumu- 
lated in the seeds. I have had frequent occasion to satisfy myself 
that the trefoil, the red-beet, the turnip, &c., contain much less 
azote after ripening their seeds than they did previously ; and all 
husbandmen know that the straw or refuse of plants that have run 
to seed, forms very indifferent fodder for cattle. 

The cambium, that peculiar globulo-cellular matter which is con- 
stantly found accumulated where the vegetable is forming woody 
tissue, contains, according to MM. Mirbel and Payen, the same 
azotized principle of an animal nature, in conjunction with ternary 
substances, whose composition, as we shall presently see, is repre- 
sented nearly by carbon and water.f As the cellular tissue is 
evolved at the expense of the cambium, the animalized matters show 
a tendency to quit the consolidated organ. The departure of these 
matters at the epoch of the growth of the cells, explains satisfactorily 
wherefore the interiors of old trees contain bat a few thousandths of 
azote, while all the organs of recent formation always contain 
several hundredths. With the assistance of chemical analysis it is 
possible to follow the appearance and the removal of the azotized 
matter ; thus in the alburnum and wood it is observed to diminish in 
quantity from the circumference to the centre ; this diminution is 
also observed in the branches, proceeding from their extremities to 
their point of junction with the trunk. 

* Payen, M6nioire sur les developpemens des veg6taux, p. 42. 

t De Mirbel et Payen, Comptes rendus de 1' Acad6inie des Sciences, t. xvi. p. 98. 



80 CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 



§ II.— PROXIMATE PRINCIPLES WITH A TERNARY COM- 
POSITION. 

OP STARCH. 

Starch is contained in the cells of vegetables under the form of 
small white granules which have no crystalline structure. 

In the year 1716, Leuwenhoeck ascertained that these granules 
were globular bodies more or less regular in their contours. He 
believed that he could perceive each globule enclosed in an envelope, 
a kind of sac different in its nature from the matter which it con- 
tained. M. Raspail, a few years ago, confirmed by his own re- 
searches the observations of Leuwenhoeck ; he farther attempted 
to measure the diameter of the globules in different kinds of starch, 
and cam.e to the conclusion that their capsule is insoluble, and that 
it is the internal part alone which is soluble in hot water.* Since 
then MM. Payen and Persoz have ascertained that if the globules 
of starch be really surrounded by a capsule, it must be present in a 
quantity scarcely appreciable — a quantity not exceeding ^^o'jj-nth of 
the weight of the starch. These first researches were followed 
by the subsequent observations of M. Payen, who has devoted him- 
self to the study of the amylaceous principle with a zeal and perse- 
verance which must secure him the gratitude of chemists and physi- 
ologists. 

M. Payen has examined a vast number of foeculas microscopi- 
cally ; the largest granules he observed were obtained from one of 
the varieties of potato, from the mcnispermum palmatum, and the 
canna gigantea. 

The globules of starch frequently exhibit a polyhedral appearance, 
a figure which evidently results from their mutual pressure as they 
have lain in the cells of the vegetable. Notwithstanding a great 
general analogy of form, the granules of the starch of different 
species of vegetables still present peculiar physiognomies, so that 
they can be distinguished in many instances by the practised eye. 
A character common to the majority of fcecula?, however, is round- 
ness of contour, when their particles have not been compressed by 
their contact in contiguous cells. 

Microscopical and chemical researches alike show that starch is 
homogeneous in properties, as in composition ; that its globules are 
composed of concentric layers, the external of which have exactly 
the same characters as tlie internal layers. f In the natural state, 
starch is insoluble in water and in alcohol ; it is very ductile, and 
under the influence of certain agents it exhibits a great degree of 
contractility. 

Feculas retain water with considerable force ; the quantity re- 

* III 1812, Vill.irs, ill ;i iwper on the structure of the potato, had already estimated 
the volume of the jiloliulus uf illHeront kinds of starch, 
t Fritzche, Ann;ile.s do roggciidorf, t. x.\.\ii. p. 139. 



TERNARY PRINCll'LES STARCH. 81 

tained varies with the temperature at which the drying was accom- 
plished. Thus the fecula of the potato, which is moist and porous, 
even when subjected to strong pressure, still retains 45 per cent, of 
water. This is the green or raw starch of manufacturers. Dry 
starch is very hygrometric. If after being dried it is placed in an 
atmosphere saturated with moisture, at 20° centig. (68° Fahr.) it 
will absorb nearly 36 per cent, of water, and its bulk increases in 
the ratio of one to one and a half ; in this state starch is brilliantly 
white, and its grains adhere so closely that they form a mass of 
sufficient firmness to take the impress of a seal ; starch in this state, 
however, pressed upon paper yields no perceptible trace of moisture ; 
it is too hard and adherent to pass through a sieve ; and when 
thrown on a metal plate heated to 125° (257° Fahr.) its particles im- 
mediately unite and form a cake. The starch of commerce, in the 
state in which it is usually found in shops, contains 18 per cent, of 
water ; it is either pulverulent or readily reducible to powder, 
though by slight pressure in the hand, it may be formed into a mass 
or ball. After drying in vacuo at the ordinary temperature, starch 
retains no more than 10 per cent, of moisture ; a temperature not 
less than 140° (284° Fahr.) is required to dry it completely ; the 
water which it retains at this temperature belongs to its constitu- 
tion, and cannot be taken from it except by combining it with bases.* 

MM. Collin and Gaultier de Claubry discovered the important 
character of starch, that of yielding a fine blue or violet color on 
combining with iodine. f According to M. Payen, the color is more 
intense, nearer to blue and more lasting, in proportion as the starch 
is more strongly compressed ; the effect of separation is to turn the 
blue to shades of violet which approach redness as the substance is 
looser. The same fecula, according to the degree of its agoregation 
in plants, is seen to assume shades, which are first reddish, then 
violet, and eventually of a more decided blue color, under the action 
of iodine. J 

M. Lassaigne has noticed a very curious property of the combina- 
tion of iodine and starch : if an amylaceous fluid, having the decided 
blue color, be heated to 89° or 90° C. (193° or 194° Fahr.) the solu- 
tion becomes completely blanched ; but it resumes its former tint as 
the liquid cools. i^ 

This property which starch possesses of striking a blue color with 
iodine, renders one of these bodies an excellent test for the otlicr. 
However, as the iodine must exist in the free state to produce its 
elTect, it is necessary, when the blue color does not show itself at 
once, in a solution in which iodine is suspected, and to which starch 
has been added, to add a few drops of sulphuric acid, so as to decom- 
pose the hydriodic acid in cases where it may exist. 

It is familiarly known that if raw starch be mixed with boiling 
water, the result will be a thick, paste-made starch. According to 

* Payen, M6mcire cit6, p. 88. 

t Collin ct GaiUhier ilu Cl;Miliry, Annalcs de Chiiiilc, t. xc. p. 1)2 

i Piiyen, MOiiioirc c\U'., p. 10.5. 

^ Lassaigne, Journal de C'hiiiiic Medicale, t. ix. p. 510. 



82 CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 

M. Payen, the change that takes place in the state of the fecula is 
owing to a swelling, a rupture, or disgregation of its granules. By 
heating a drachm of starch, mixed with about a couple of ounces of 
water, to about 60° cent. (140° Fahr.) the microscope shows us that 
the smallest or youngest grains — those possessed of the least cohe- 
sion — have absorbed a considerable quantity of water, and that the 
expansion of the contents has caused a certain number of the glo- 
oules to burst ; at this temperature, however, some grains of fecula 
are observed, which do not appear to have yet attained their maxi- 
mum of enlargement, and whose contents consequently are not yet 
diffused through the liquid ; it is only between 72° and 100° cent. 
(161.6° and 212° Fahr.) that the maximum of expansion becomes 
general, and that the solution acquires its greatest consistency.* 

The remarkable property possessed by starch of making a gluti- 
nous solution or thick paste with water under the influence of heat, 
led M. Payen to conjecture that a contrary effect would be produced 
by lowering the temperature — that the starch might be recovered in 
its original state of distinct globules by suitable management ; and 
this he in fact accomplished by an ingenious procedure. Starch 
appears to suffer no actual change when diffused in water by exposure 
to a temperature of 212° Fahr. ; the granules have only swollen to 
about thirty times their original dimensions by the imbibition of a 
large quantity of water. 

We have already seen how starch may be extracted from wheat- 
en flour ; this method, however, is not the one that is usually 
followed to procure this useful substance, so large a quantity of 
which is consumed in the arts. Formerly, starch was universally 
obtained from grain, — wheat ; at present the potato furnishes a still 
larger quantity than grain. In the equatorial regions of South 
America, starch is abundantly prepared from the Yuca, {Jatropha 
manihot,) and from several species of palm. 

To obtain starch from wheat, the grain is either coarsely ground 
and mixed with water in large tubs ; or it is put to steep in sacks 
until it is so soft that a process of kneading suffices to set the starch 
at liberty. 

Starch from potatoes. The potatoes are grated after having been 
well washed, and the pulp being thrown on a sieve, the starch is 
carried off by the water and deposited in suitable vessels. The 
washings in the manufacture of potato starch soon become putrid 
by reason of the azotized matter which they contain, and until lately 
occasioned much annoyance, until M. Dailly conceived the happy 
idea of turning them to account as liquid manure. 

Starch of the Yuca, or Jatropha manihot. The manihot yields 
very large roots, rich in starch. These are taken up a little after 
the flowering, when the fecula is most abundant. To extract the 
starch, precisely the same process is employed as in the case of the 
potato. In South America the manioc is distinguished into yuca 
dulce (mild) and yuca brava, (malignant ;) the latter epithet applying 

* Payen, Meiiioire cit. p. 96. 



TERNARY PRINCIPLES STARCH. 83 

to the jatropha containing poisonous juice. The two yucas are, 
however, but one and the same species ; at least a skilful botanist, 
M. Goudot, who resided for several years in America, could not 
perceive any specific differences between them. The poisonous 
principle of the yuca brava must be very volatile, or readily destroy- 
ed by heat, for the root may be eaten with impunity after it has 
been roasted, while the animals who eat it in the raw state soon ex- 
perience the most distressing effects. 

The Indians seldom prepare starch from the jatropha ; but the 
root frequently constitutes the staple of their food. It is from the 
yuca brava that they obtain the cassava, which supplies the place of 
bread with them. Among the Indians in the country near the river 
Malta, one of the principal tributaries of the Oronoko, I have seen 
the cassava prepared in the following manner : the roots of the 
manioc were scraped on a sort of rasp formed of small fragments of 
flint stuck into a plank ; the pulp was then put to drain in a long 
strainer made of the entire bark of a species of fig ; the juice having 
drained away, water was added to finish the washing ; the liquid 
came out nearly clear and without bringing away any perceptible 
quantity of starch. To form the pulp into cakes of cassava, it was 
spread out on an earthen dish placed over the fire ; the process was 
complete when the cassava was dry, and slightly toasted on the out- 
side. Cassava bread is not very palatable, but it possesses the pro- 
perty of keeping for a longtime in spite of heat and moisture, and is 
frequently an indispensable article of provision with the South Amer- 
ican traveller. The Indians say that they cannot obtain cassava 
from the yuca dulce. 

Starch from palms. In the Moluccas and Philippine Islands, 
and in the plains of Apure, there are certain palms which yield a 
species of fecula. This fecula is found in a soft substance, general- 
ly situated in the centre of these trees. The marrow of these palms 
is dried, and when sifted presents itself in the forni of grains, which 
in commerce bear the name of sago. 

None of the amylaceous principles or feculas obtained by the 
processes which I have mentioned are absolutely pure ; even sup- 
posing all the soluble substances to have been removed by washing, 
they still retain fatty matters, azotized principles, and coloring 
substances. Starch is purified by following up the water washings 
by the action of alcohol, of acetic acid, and of ammonia. Starch in 
its state of greatest purity, and dried at 100° cent. (212° Fahr.) 
contains, according to the analysis of M. Jacquelain : 

Carbon ... 44.9 

Hydrogen 6.3 

Oxygen • 48.8 

100.0* 

By slight roasting, amylaceous feculas undergo considerable 
changes ; they become soluble in water, and then present the pro- 
perties of gum.f Starch thus roasted, supplies the place of gum in 

* Jacquelain, Annates de Ctiimie et de Physique, t. Ixxiii. p. 181, 2e s6rie. 
t Vauquelin and Bouillon Lagrange, Bulletin de Phannacie, t. iii. p. 54. 



84 CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 

various manufacturing processes ; still it should not be confounded 
with gum in a chemical point of view. The acids act with more or 
less energy on starch, and give rise to different products. Nitric 
acid, when it is diluted with water, merely dissolves fecula ; but at 
a certain degree of concentration it exerts a destructive action. In 
this reaction several acids are formed, among others oxalic acid. 
By employing very dilute sulphuric acid, KirchhofF succeeded in 
clianging starch into a saccharine substance similar to the sugar of 
the grape. The operation may be performed in a leaden or silver 
pan, or, what is preferable, especially when the process is carried 
on upon the great scale, in wooden vessels, in which the liquid mass 
is heated by steam. According to M. Couverchel, several organic 
acids are capable of changing fecula into sugar in a similar manner ; 
such are oxalic, tartaric, and malic acids. 

The artificial conversion of starch into grape-sugar has not yet 
been satisfactorily accounted for. The acid employed does not seem 
to undergo any change ; it is found in its original state and quantity 
after the operation. M. de Saussure thinks that the effect of the 
reaction is the fixation of water ; thus 100 parts of fecula yielded 
him 110.40 parts of sugar.* 

M. Couverchel and M. Guerin, on the contrary, state that the 
quantity of sugar obtained was less than that of the starch they 
employed. 

Ghiten exerts a reaction on starch similar to that produced by 
acids ; Kirchhoff discovered, that under the influence of the azotized 
matters which are met with in flour, the fecula is converted into 
sugar. t Two parts of starch being mixed with four parts of cold 
water, on adding twenty parts of boiling water, a thick paste is pro- 
duced ; if into this one part of dry powdered gluten be introduced, 
and the mixture be kept at the temperature of 60° cent. (140° Fahr.) 
the paste becomes more and more liquid, so that the mixture may 
be filtered at the end of from six to eight hours. By concentration 
a sirup is obtained, in which small crystals of sugar are perceived. 
It is well known that during the act of germination, fermentable 
saccharine matter is produced. Kirchhoff concluded, from his ex- 
periments, that this production of sugar in germination is attributa- 
ble to the reaction of the gluten on the starch. Germinating grain, 
barley-malt, for instance, reacts rapidly and powerfully on any fe- 
cula with which it is brought into contact ; a fact well known to, 
and constantly taken advantage of, by manufacturers of spirits from 
potatoes and raw grain, large mashes of which are rapidly converted 
into sweet fermentable liquids under the action of a little malt. 

These facts, it is evident, cannot be explained by Kirchhoff's ex- 
periment ; in the fermentation of the potato, tiie mass of fecula to be 
converted into sugar is too great compared with the quantity of glu- 
ten which exists in the malted barley. Further, the gluten in grain 
which has not germinated, scarcely exerts any appreciable action. 

* Saussure, HiblioUiitque l)ritannique, t. Ivi. p. 333. 
t Kirchhoff louriuil do Pliarinacie, t. ii. p. 250. 



DIASTASE. 85 

The principle which, in the preceding operations, converts the starch 
into sugar, must therefore become developed during germination. 
This important point in the art of the distiller has been investigated 
with great ingenuity by M. Dubrunfaut ;* and MM. Persoz and 
Payen succeeded in separating the peculiar matter in barley-malt 
which possesses tlie property of converting starch into sugar. This 
matter has been called diastase. 

Diastase exists in the seeds of all the cereals which have germi- 
nated ; it is met with more especially near the germs, it seems even 
that the radicles contain none of it. Nor is diastase observed in the 
shoots or roots of the potato ; it is to be met with only in the tubers, 
around the eyes or points where the young sprouts are developed, 
precisely as M. Payen has remarked, in the place where we should 
conceive its presence to be necessary for effecting the solution of 
the fecula. It is also found to exist in the bark and beneath the 
buds of trees, always in contact with starch. f Diastase is gene- 
rally obtained from malt, and when carefully preparecl, its peculiar 
power is such, that one part by weight is sufficient completely to 
liquefy two thousand parts of starch. Diastase is solid, white, amor- 
phous, insoluble in pure alcohol, soluble in water and weak alcohol. 
The solution very readily undergoes change ; it becomes acid, and 
then no longer exerts any action on fecula. When dried, it keeps 
much better ; still, at the end of two years, it seems to have lost its 
distinguishing properties. Diastase has no action on vegetable tinc- 
tures, on albumen, gluten, cane-sugar, gum-arabic, or the woody 
libra. That which more especially characterizes it, is its powerful 
action on fecula ; it may be advantageously used to separate and 
purify the preceding substances, when they are mixed with starcii. 
The presence of diastase in malt explains the phenomenon of the 
liquefaction of starch effected by the action of a small quantity of 
that substance. This solution is not effected by gluten, nor by hor- 
deine, as M. Dubrunfaut had imagined. 

By the action of diastase, or of malted barley, the starch on being 
liquefied is not entirely converted into sugar; there are other dis- 
tinct products to be considered in this change. The sirup ob- 
tained by concentrating the liquefied starch, contains sugar capable 
of undergoing the vinous fermentation, and a gummy matter, dextrine. 
These two substances may be separated by means of dilute alcohol, 
which dissolves the sugar and leaves the gum untouched. The 
relative quantities of dextrine and sugar produced by the action of 
diastase are variable, and depend both on the temperature at which 
the process is conducted, and on the continuance of the reaction. 
In the first period of the process, the dextrine predominates ; but it 
becomes less and less by degrees, and finally gives place to sugar. 

M. Guerin ascertained a curious fact, which shows how the dias- 
tase developed in plants may act on their starch : reaction takes 
^lace even at ordinary temperatures. In one of M. Guerin's experi- 

* Dubrunfaut, l\ICmoire!^de la Socittii Royale d'Acnculture, annne 18'23, p. 110. 
t I'ayen and rersoz, Aiinalcs do Chiinio et dc I'liysiiiiia, t. liii. p. 73- t. Ivi. p. 337, 
"Je scric. 

8 



86 CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 

merits, at a temperature no higher than 20° cent. (68° Fahr.) a quan- 
tity of starch, at the end of twenty-four hours, was converted into 
sirup, which yielded 77 per cent, of saccharine matter.* 

Pure dextrine. M. Payen freed dextrine from the sugar which 
usually accompanies it by precipitating a sirup of fecula previously 
dissolved in dilute alcohol, by means of alcohol nearly free from wa- 
ter. Dextrine well dried, and reduced to powder, has a specific 
gravity of 1.51. The specific gravity of pure starch is 1.51, that of 
the sugar of starch 1.61.t 

M. Payen found dextrine dried at a temperature of 212° Fahr. to 
consist of — 

Carbon 44.3 

Hydrogen 6.0 

Oxygen 49.7 

lOO.Ot 

a composition identical with that of starch. 

We have seen that water, acidulated with sulphuric acid, trans- 
forms starch into sugar ; and that in this respect, the acid acts pre- 
cisely in the same way as malted barley, like which, the acid first 
causes the fecula to pass into the state of dextrine : by checking the 
reaction at the proper moment, this substance may thus be obtained, 
as was shown by Messrs. Biot and Persoz.^ When starch, for in- 
stance, is triturated with concentrated sulphuric acid, if the mixture 
be diluted with half its volume of water, and be left at rest for an 
hour, alcohol will throw down almost the whole of the starch employ- 
ed in the state of dextrine. 

M. Payen has remarked that starch is never met with in the vege- 
table tissues while in the rudimentary state ; the spongioles, the radi- 
cles, the foliaceous buds, the interior of the ovules, contain none of it. 
Nor is starch found in the epidermis, nor in the primary cells of the 
subjacent tissues. This proximate principle seems to be exclu- 
ded from those parts of vegetables that are more directly exposed to 
atmospheric influences : it is only met at a certain depth ; and the 
globules which constitute starch increase in number and in size in 
the cells most remote from the surface. The subterraneous organs 
of plants, — certain bulbs, most tubers, abound in amylaceous matter. 
It might be maintained that light modified this substance, at the very 
moment that it was subjected to the vital influence, and that it was 
only preserved in the dark. 

On the globules of some species of fcecula there is found a point 
or hilum, which, according to some observers, serves to fix them to 
the parietes of the cells which enclose them. It often happens, 
however, that no hilum can be distinguished, even by the help of the 
most powerful microscopes ; to render it apparent, recourse must be 
had to desiccation, which, by causing the globular mass to shrink, 
allows the part carrying the hilum to project, by reason of ita 

* Gu6rin, Annales de Chimic, t. Ix. p. 42, 2e s6rie. 

t Payen, Memoires cit(>s, p. 1G9. t Mem, p. 157. 

j Biot and Persoz, Annales de Chimie et de Physique, t. lii. p. 73, 2e s6rie. 



muLiNE. 87 

stronger cohesion. M. Payen does not regard the hilum as a point 
of permanent attachment, connecting the grain of starch to the in- 
terior wall of the cell. He considers it as the orifice of the duct by 
which growth is effected by intersusception. In support of this 
view, M. Payen observes, that in a great number of vegetable cells, 
especially in those of the potato, and of the rhizomas, the globules 
of starch are developed in such quantity, that it is actually impossi- 
ble that each of these should be united directly to the inner wall of 
the cell* 

INULINE. 

This substance, discovered by Rose in the Inula helenium, pre- 
sents certain analogies with starch. It forms the greater part of 
the solid matter of the tubers of the Jerusalem Artichoke and 
Dahlia, which do not contain starch. Inuline is dissolved in boiling 
water ; on cooling it is deposited in globules, which, under the 
microscope, appear diaphanous, adhering to one another like strings 
of beads ; exposed to a temperature of 367° Fahr. it melts com- 
pletely and acquires new properties, becoming soluble in cold water 
and in alcohol. Inuline is transformed into dextrine and sugar by 
the mineral acids ; but it possesses certain properties which show 
it distinct from true starch. In the first place, it is not colored by 
iodine ; and then acetic acid, which is without action on starch, 
produces with inuline precisel}"^ the same effects as the sulphuric, 
phosphoric, and hydrochloric acids ; finally, diastase, whose reaction 
upon starch is so peculiar, so prompt, and so powerful, does not 
cause any change in inuline. It is therefore easy to separate these 
two substances when they are mingled, by treating the mixture 
either with acetic acid, which dissolves the inuline, or with diastase, 
which liquefies the starch. Inuline has been analyzed by M. Payen, 
after having been dried at 253° Fahr. and having been melted at 
367° Fahr. In both cases it has the same composition. 

Carbon 4f).6 

Hydrogen 6.1 

Oxygen • • • 49.3 

100.0 

The composition here is obviously the same as that of starch and 
dextrine. 

OF WOODY MATTER AND CELLULAR TISSUE. 

The most solid part of plants, that which forms in some sort their 
skeleton, is the wood in trees, the woody fibre in herbaceous plants. 
Woody fibre, as it used to be prepared and considered, viz. by the 
reaction of certain agents which have the property of dissolving the 
gummy, resinous, and saline substances which are commonly asso- 
ciated with it, consists, in fact, of two substances, one the cellular 
substance, constituting the tissue of wood and of all the organs of 

* Tayen, M6moires cil6s, p. 183. 



88 



CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 



plants, the other the woody substance, properly so called, filling-, 
and in some sort consolidating the cells. This distinction between 
these two elements of wood was first made by M. Mohl ; but M. 
Payen was the first who fixed the opinion of chemists and of vege- 
table physiologists upon the true nature of these immediate princi- 
ples.* By treating the vegetable tissue in its nascent and still 
gelatinous state — the unimpregnated kernel of the almond, of the 
apricot tree, &c., the membranous matter of the cambium of the 
cucumber, the spongioles of radicles, leaves, wood, &c. — with differ- 
ent menstrua, M. Payen obtained the cellular tissue in the state of 
purity, and having an elementary composition almost identical, from 
whatever source derived ; a fact which may be seen from the fol- 
lowing table, which gives the composition of cellular tissue from 
diflerent sources after having been dried at 352° Fahr. 





Carbon. 


Hydrogen. 


Oxygen. 


Ovules of the almond-tree . . . 


43.6 


6.1 


50.3 


" of the apple and pear 


44.7 


6.1 


49.2 


" of the helianthus annuus . 


44.1 


6.2 


49.7 


Pith of the elder 


43.4 


6.0 


50.6 


Cotton 


44.4 


6.1 


49.5 


Endive 


43.4 


6.1 


50.5 


Banana 


43.2 


6.5 


50.3 


Leaves of the aofave .... 


44.7 


6.4 


48.9 


Cotton of the Virginian poplar 


44.1 


6.5 


49.4 


Heart of oak 


44.5 


6.0 


49.5 


Pine-tree 


44.4 


7.0 


48.6 


Perisperm of the phytelaphas 


44.1 


6.3 


49.6 


Mushroom 


44.5 


6.7 


48.8 



The primary tissue, consequently, which constitutes the skeleton 
of wood, is still isomeric or identical in elementary composition with 
starch. With mineral acids the cellular tissue further undergoes 
changes which assimilate it with starch ; for on treating it with sul- 
phuric acid it is changed into dextrine and sugar. 

The composition of the cellular tissue ditfers considerably ffom 
that of the woody fibre as it has hitherto been obtained after the 
action of solvents, and been examined by preceding chemists. 
Pure wood or woody tissue consists of the following proportions of 
elements : 



* Dumas, Comptcs reiidus, vol. viii. p. 53. 



WOOD. 



89 





s 
o 
■2 


s 
8, 
2 




Authorities. 




o 


^ 


O 




Woody tissue of the oak 


41.8 


5.7 


52.5 


Gay-Lussac and Thenard. 


" of the beech 


42.7 


5.8 


51,5 


" (( 


" of the box 


44.4 


5.6 


50.0 


Prout. 


" of the willow 


44.6 


5.6 


49.8 


(< 


" of the oak 


49.7 


6.0 


44.3 


« 


" of the beech 


44.3 


6.0 


49.7 


Pay en. 


" of the aspen 


44.5 


6.1 


49.4 


(( 


NVood in the natural state : 


45.6 


6.4 


48.0 


" 


" of the oak 


39.4 


6.2 


54.4 


(( 


" of the beech 


39.3 


6.3 


544 


" of the herminiera 

ft 


46.9 


5.3 


47.2 



From these analyses it appears that wood in the natural state 
contains more carbon than woody tissue obtained in the way of puri- 
fication, and that this latter substance is also richer in carbon than 
the ceihilar tissue which necessarily forms part of it. In the 
purified woody tissue, therefore, the cellular tissue is associated vvitli 
the principle which fills its cells, or which incrusts it, and it id 
to this matter that M. Payen has applied the name of incrustiiiL;' 
matter ; it is wood properly so called ; it is that which gives to 
wood its hardness, its tenacity ; it predominates in hard wood and in 
knots ; it corresixjnds with the duramen of physiologists ; it consti- 
tutes almost the whole of the hard particles which are met with in 
woody pears and in cork, and which are hard enough to blunt well- 
tempered steel instruments. As this incrusting matter is friable, in 
many instances it may be pulverized and separated from the tissue 
which surrounds it, this last tearing or yielding in shreds under the 
pestle. By means of the sieve the incrusting matter may in this 
simple way lie obtained nearly in a state of purity. The analysis 
of M. Payen shows it to consist of: — 

Carbon 53.8 

Hydrogen 6.0 

Os>gen 40-2 

100.0 

Deducting resinous matters susceptible of solution in alcohol or 
ether, and of gummy and other substances which are soluble in water, 
the tissues of vegetables must consequently possess an elementary 
composition which varies between that of the cellular tissue and 
that of the incrusting matter ; these are the extreme terms, and the 
entire composition of the mixed tissues will be by so much the richer 
in carbon as they contain less cellular tissue. The incrusting mat- 
ter being soluble in alkaline leys, it was by treating wood with solu- 
tions of soda and potash that M. Payen succeeded in obtaining the 
cellular tissue, which is much less susceptible of the action of these 

8* 



90 



CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 



agents. But treatment of different kinds, which it is not necessary 
to enter upon in this place, is required to procure the substance in a 
state of perfect purity.* 

The facts which have just been exposed, in regard to the chemi- 
cal composition of wood, corroborate the observations of physiolo- 
gists. We now understand much better than we did formerly the 
changes which the cells of vegetables experience as they grow and 
become aged : it is by the appearance of the incrusting woody mat- 
ter that their walls, thin, transparent, and colorless at first, get thick, 
become opaque, and acquire consistence. By means of the dissec- 
tions effected by M. Payen with the aid of purely chemical means, 
we may obtain assurance that the tissues of all vegetables, whether 
phcenogamous or cryptogamous, may be reduced to a single substance, 
cellular tissue, having an invariable composition, and forming the 
vesicles or bladders of the cellular mass of plants. 

This matter exists nearly in an isolated state in the thick wajls of 
the cells of the perisperms of various seeds, those of the date for 
example. From the microscopic researches of M. Payen and A. 
Brongniart, it appears that the matter which is added to the young 
cells is not deposited upon the inner surface of their walls, but that 
it penetrates and insinuates itself into their tissue. The relation of 
the cellular to the woody matter in the development of the walls of 
cells varies very much, some perisperms containing nothing but pure 
cellular tissue, while the stony concretions of the pear and of cork 
consist almost entirely of incrusting woody matter. 

Wood, in the general acceptation of the word, is the solid part of 
the trunk and branches ; the properties and aptitudes of the substance 
vary greatly, according to the plant which has produced it. Wood 
is of higher density than water, and if it floats in this fluid it is only 
because of the air with which its pores are filled. Saw-dust, chips, 
and larger pieces of wood sink when the air which they contain is 
expelled and replaced by water. The specific gravity of the white 
woods, such as those of the willow and pine, is about 1.46, that of 
the heaviest woods, such as those of the oak and the beech, 1.53. 



DENSITY or DIFFERENT KINDS OF WOOD ACCORDING TO BRISSON. 



Pomegranate 1.35 

Guaiac, Ebony 1.33 

Box 1.32 

Oak of 60 years old, the heart. . . 1 . 17 

Medlar 0.94 

Olive 0.92 

Spanish Mulberry C 89 

Beech 0.85 

Ash 0.84 

Hornbeam 0.80 

Yew 0.80 

Apple 0.79 

Plum 0.78 

Maple 0.75 

Cherry 0.75 



Orange 0.70 

Quince 0.70 

Elm, the trunk 0.67 

Walnut 0.67 

Pear 0.66 

Spanish Cypress 0.64 

Lime 0.60 

Hazel 0.60 

Willow 0.58 

Thuya 0.56 

Pine 0.55 

Spanish white poplar 0-52 

Pine 0.49 

Poplar 0.38 

Cork 0.24 



* For an account of these, see Payen in proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, 
vol. vii. p. 1055. 



WOOD. 91 

It must not be forgotten, however, that age, climate, and soil ex- 
ert a marked influence upon the specific gravity of the same species 
of wood. 

Wood, according to the use for which it is intended, is distinguished 
into fire-wood, building timber, and dye-wood. When first cut down, 
all timber contains a considerable quantity of water ; 100 parts of 
walnut-tree dried at 212" Fahr. lost 37.5 parts by weight ; of white 
oak, 11 parts ; of maple, 48. On an average, the quantity of water 
contained in green wood may be estimated at about 40 per cent. ; 
and drying or seasoning for eight or ten months will not cause the 
loss of more than about 25 per cent, of water. The wood which is 
used for burning almost always contains about a quarter of its weight 
of moisture, which not only does not assist in producing heat, but 
actually dissipates a great deal during its conversion into vapor. It 
is, therefore, highly advantageous in all operations where wood is 
the fuel, only to employ that which is thoroughly dry. So well is 
this fact ascertained, that in some manufactories the wood is previ- 
ously dried in stoves before being consumed in the furnace. 

The composition of woody matter may be represented by carbon 
and water : of carbon the mean may be stated at 52, of hydrogen 
and oxygen, in the proportions which form water, at 48. The defi- 
nitive products of its combustion ought consequently to be carbonic 
acid and water. The heat disengaged daring this combustion, neces- 
sarily proceeds from the union of the combustible elements of the 
wood with the oxygen of the atmosphere. But in this particular 
case, the hydrogen being already present with the proportion of oxy- 
gen required for its combustion, it may be regarded as already 
burned, the state of condensation in which the oxygen exists being 
considered. The heat produced by the wood, therefore, depends 
solely on the quantity of carbon which it contains. 

Natural philosophers in France agree in designating as unity, in 
reference to caloric, the quantity of heat necessary to raise a kilo- 
gramme, or 2.2 lbs. avoirdupois of water, one degree of the centi- 
grade thermometer, (r.8 F.) The following table, by Rumford, 
is intended to show the different calorific or heating powers of dif- 
ferent kinds of wood, and its interpretation is this : since 1 kilo- 
gramme or 2.2 lbs. avoird. of lime-tree gave out 3460 units of heat, 
it follows that this quantity of the combustible would suffice to raise 
by 1 degree centigrade, (1°.8F.,) for example, from 10° to 11° cent. 
3460 kilogrammes, or 7612 lbs. avoirdupois of water. 



92 



CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION OF VEGETABLES. 



Kinds of wood. 


Units of heat 
evolved. 


Lime-tree, dry .... 
The same, thoroughly stove dried 
Beech, dry, four years seasoned 
The same, well dried in a stove 
Elm, from four to five years seasoned 
Oak, fire-wood .... 
Ash, dry ..... 
Wild cherry . . . . 
Fir, dry . . . . 
The same, well dried in a stove 
Poplar, seasoned .... 
The same, well dried in a stove 

Hornbeam 

Oak, dry 




3460 
3960 
3375 
3630 
3037 
3550 
3075 
3375 
3037 
3750 
3450 
3712 
3187 
3300 



From the experiments of Clement, it appears that the heating 
power of charcoal is equal to 7050 units. Dry wood containing, as 
we have seen, 52 per cent, of charcoal, its heating power has been 
deduced theoretically, as equal to 3666. Mr. Marcus Bull in Amer- 
ica, made a series of experiments to determine the relative quantities 
of heat given out by different kinds of wood, from which M. Peclet 
has been led to conclude that the same weight of dry wood of every 
kind has the same heating power, and that this for a kilogramme, 
or 2.2 lbs. avoird. of wood dried by artificial means, is equal to 3500 
units, while the same quantity of the same wood having been cut 
and seasoned during from ten to twelve months, and containing from 
20 to 25 per cent, of water, is no higher than about 260 units. 

By way of comparison, I shall here add the heating power of the 
several combustibles in general use, in contrast with that of wood : 

1 kilogrm. or 2.2 lbs. avoird. of wood-charcoal produces 7226 units of heat. 

" " coal 6000 " 

" " peat 3005 " 

" " peat charcoal 6400 " 

Although the same quantities of wood, brought to the same degree 
of dryness, appear to have the same absolute calorific power, all are 
not alike adapted to the same purposes. Hard woods burn slowly, 
and give out less heat in a certain time than the less compact kinds 
of wood. This is the reason why fir is preferred to oak in furnaces 
where the object is to obtain the most intense heats. It were for- 
eign to our object to enter upon any consideration of the various 
qualities, or of the adaptation to particular uses, of different species 
of timber. I may, however, add a table of the ordinary dimensions 
of well-grown trees of different kinds, such as are commonly found 
in these countries : 



93 



Trees. 


Usual height of 


Usual 


Trunk. 


Diameter. 




Feet. 


Iiirhcs. 


The spruce fir . 
Larch 






I 26 to 100 


47.1 
39.3 


Poplar 








19 " 65 


31.8 


Pine 








16 " 65 


34.1 


Plane 






■ 




36.1 


Oak, Elm . 










31.4 


Birch 










29.4 


Beech 






[ 16 " 48 


28.2 


Lime 










25.9 


Ash 










23.5 


Willow 










11.7 


Chestnut . 






1 13 « 48 


36.1 


Chestnut (anothe 


r variety) 




28.2 


Maple 








10 " 48 


28.2 


Service 








13 " 39 


17.6 


Acacia 








13 " 26 


19.2 


Hornbeam . 






\ 


21.2 


Mulberry . 






[ 10 " 23 


16.5 


Wild Pear . 






) 


14.1 


Crab 








6 « 20 


12.9 


Walnut 








6 " 16 


36.1 



These may be taken as the measurement of trees at their full 
growth, and fit for felling. The soil being of the same quality, the 
dimensions of trees depend especially upon their age ; individual 
trees of the same species, however, occasionally acquire extraor- 
dinary dimensions. 

Every one must have noticed the rapidity with which young trees 
grow ; but is the growth the same for every period of the existence 
of trees, or do they attain a certain determinate size like animals, 
and then cease from further increase ? We have found that in 
those climates where vegetation is suspended for a portion of the 
year, the increase in the diameter of trees takes place periodically 
by the addition of a concentric layer of woody tissue ; so that it is 
possible to determine the age of a dicotyledonous tree by the number 
of its concentric rings, counted at the bottom of the trunk. With a 
view to ascertain the amount of increase in the woody layers at dif- 
ferent periods of vegetable life, De CandoUe measured their thick- 
ness, and found that if the annual increase presented a certain re- 
gularity, it was still very far from being absolute even in the case 
of a single species. The oak especially offered striking anomalies ; 
thus a trunk which had grown slowly in diameter was found to have 
increased more rapidly as it got older. He found young trees of 
the same species, tiie growth of which, very slow at first, by and 
by became accelerated, and then fell off in a third period of their 
existence. From the whole of his observations, De Candolle con- 



94 TREES— TIMBER. 

eludes that the growth of our common European trees having gone 
on with a certain rapidity to the age of from about fifty to seventy 
years, then became slower, but continued regular to extreme age. 
The inequalities of growth, conspicuous in the different thicknesses 
of different rings, he thinks are mainly due to the kind of soil which 
the mass of the roots encountered in their progress, or to the re- 
moval of other trees which grew in the vicinity. The diminished 
thickness of the rings, after trees have passed a certain age, he 
ascribes to the depth to which the roots have now penetrated, and 
their consequent remoteness from the air ; and further, to the resist- 
ance opposed to the expansion of the trunk by the bark, which has 
now become thick, hard, and unyielding. Mr. Knight found that 
old pear-trees, relieved of their outer bark, formed more wood in a 
couple of summers afterwards, than they had made in the twenty 
years that preceded the operation.* 

The forests of intertropical countries produce a vast number of 
gigantic trees, many of which might doubtless be turned to excellent 
use ; but the information we have on the trees of these latitudes is 
very imperfect. In New Granada, the wood which is known under 
the name of wood of St. Martha, {astroneum graveolens ?) is fre- 
quently employed for building purposes as well as for making furni- 
ture. It is very hard, and more beautiful than mahogany, its color 
being deeper. M. Goudot measured a tree of this kind, which was 
1.6 metre or nearly 4| feet in diameter, including the alburnum, and 
had 32 centimetres or upwards of 18 inches of heart-wood. Belfries 
having supports of this wood are met with, which have stood for 
more than a century exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather. 
This tree grows in the dry soils of the hottest regions of South 
America, and seldom at an elevation of more than about fifteen hun- 
dred feet above the level of the sea. 

Cedar {cedrela odorata) is never attacked by insects, doubtless 
because of its aromatic odor ; this valuable property makes it in- 
valuable as building timber. The tree attains to large dimensions. 
M. Goudot measured one in the forest of Quindiu in South America, 
which was upwards of 1 50 feet in height by more than 6^ feet in 
diameter. It grows freely through a zone of considerable breadth, 
from a height of about 3280 to 6560 feet above the level of the sea, 
a circumstance which, according to my own observations, would in- 
dicate the extreme temperature of the district which it inhabits to 
be between 66° and 76° Fahr. 

There are several other beautiful and useful timber trees of the 
Cordilleras — the Nogal {juglans . . .1) which grows between 6500 
and 9800 feet above the sea line ; the escobo, Xhepino {laxus montana 
Willd.) whose region lies between the 2.800 and 11.400 feet of ele- 
vation ; the arayan and the guayacan, — all are serviceable in one 
direction or another. The caracoli {anacardium caracoli) and the 
fig (Ignerones) are trees which attain to extraordinary sizes, and 
afford light woods that prove useful in various circumstances. Un 

* De Candolle, Vegetable Physiology, p. 975. 



TREES TIMBER. 95 

der the tropics, indeed, the trees generally exhibit a luxuriance of 
vegetation which strikes European travellers with amazement ; M. 
Goudot, for example, measured a bomhax (B- pentandrwn) no more 
than sixty years old, the trunk of which was 8 metres or 26^ feet 
in circumference, and whose boughs covered a circular area of 39 
metres or 120 feet in diameter. 

There is a beautiful tree which grows in the valleys of Arragua 
in Venezuela, the Zamang, a species of mimosa, according to Hum- 
boldt, one of which, in particular, is greatly celebrated, and under 
the shade of which" I rested on the 24th of January, 1823. This 
magnificent tree is to be distinguished at the distance of a league ; 
its branches form a hemispherical crown of 187 metres or 613 feet 
in circumference, extending like a vast umbrella, the points ap- 
proaching to within from 10 to 16 or 18 feet of the ground. The 
trunk of this extraordinary tree is nearly 65 feet in height and up- 
wards of 9f feet in diameter. This tree is an object of veneration 
with the Indians. It does not seem to have altered in its appear- 
ance since it was first particularly noticed ; the earliest conquerors 
of Venezuela seem to have met with it in the same state as it is at 
the present time. When Humboldt measured the Zamang de Tur- 
mero, its branches on one side were entirely stripped of their leaves. 
Twenty years afterwards I found it green in every part ; but the 
leaves and brandies with the southern aspect were not so numerous 
nor so vigorous as the others. 

The dragon-tree of Orotava in the Island of Teneriffe is one of 
the oldest vegetable monuments of the present world. Humboldt 
gives it a diameter of 17 feet, and its height, as stated by M. Ledru, 
is upwards of 65 feet. When Teneriffe was discovered in 1402, 
this tree appears to have had the same dimensions which it presents 
at the present time. 

The mahogany {cedrela mahogani) is a very long-lived tree. In 
Jamaica it sometimes acquires a diameter of upwards of 6 feet, and 
Sir W. J. Hooker has calculated that two centuries at least are re- 
quired to supply timber of the large scantling which w^e constantly 
see in the yards of our timber merchants and cabinet-makers. 

The Hymenaa courbaril, one of the largest trees of the Antilles, 
yields, like mahogany, a timber that is hard and in great request 
among cabinet-makers and inlayers. It sometimes grows to 19 feet 
in diameter. 

The Baobab (Adansonia digitatd) lives for centuries, and acquires 
extraordinary dimensions. Adanson saw one in the Cape de Verdes, 
in the trunk of which an inscription was found, which was covered 
by three hundred layers of wood ; it had been cut by two English 
travellers three centuries before. From positive observations col- 
lected by Adanson, a table has been constructed to show the pro- 
gress and probable age of the baobab : 



96 SIZE AND LONGEVITY OF TREES. 

Age of the Baobab. Diameter of the Trunk. Height. 



1 year, 


0.10 feet 


5.25 feet 


20 


1.04 


16.40 


30 


2.41 


23.30 


100 


9.84 


30.84 


1000 


14.76 


61.68 


2400 


19.03 


68.24 


5150 


31.99 


76.76 



De Candolle has remarked that this longevity of the baobab is 
made the more surprising by the softness and liability of its wood to 
decay. But again, it must be considered that the great diameter of 
the trunk, in relation to the height, gives the tree a stability which 
is possessed by no other — by enabling it to resist violent gales of 
wind. 

It strikes me that there may very well be some mistake in Adan- 
son's estimates of the age of the baobab. When we see such irregu- 
larity in the growth of trees of the same species planted in the same 
soil, little reliance can be placed on any deductions drawn from the 
size of the trunk when the concentric rings cannot be counted. In 
proof of this I here give the measurements of two baobabs planted in 
1821 in the Botanical Garden of French Guiana. In 1842 these 
trees were found : — 

feet. feet. 

No. 1. Length of stem from ground Diameter of the base 5.41 

to first branches 7.70 Do. at origin of brandies 4.23 

i-T n „ onr Diameter of base 2.63 

i\o. -. uo e.Jb jjp at origin of branches 1.48 

In the tree No. 2 the branches were puny and nowise in relation 
with the size of the trunk. 

The bald cypress {taxodmm distichum) is a tree that is very 
abundant in Mexico, and in the southern parts of the United States. 
At Chapultepec there is one of these trees called the cypress of Mon- 
tezuma, which tradition says flourished in the reign of that prince. 
In 1831 the tree was still vigorous, and its trunk was 41 feet in cir- 
cumference. There is another cypress near Oaxaca, under the 
shade of which Fernando Cortez is still reported to have rested ; the 
trunk of this tree is upwards of 39 feet in circumference, and it is 
105 feet in height. Michaux measured several taxodiums in the 
Floridas which approached these two in their dimensions. 

We have only uncertain data in regard to the age which palms 
may attain to ; their sizes, however, are well known. In Egypt, 
according to M. Delille, the date-trees are generally about 65 feet in 
height. In the Andes of Quindiu several ceroxylons were measured, 
the trunks of which were from 195 to 230 feet in height ! Martins 
assigns the following as the extreme dimensions of the palms of the 
Brazils : from 75 to 127 or 128 feet in height, by a diarneter of from 
6 to about \2\ inches. 

Among several palms (arica oleacera) planted in the Botanical 
Garden of Cayenne in 1821, the tallest twenty years afterwards was 



SIZE AND LONGEVITY OF TREES. 97 

48 feet from the ground to the bottom of the crown, and 3 feet 6^ 
inches in circumference at the base ; at 6^ feet from the surface of 
the ground the circumference was only 2 feet 1 inch, and a small 
fraction. As the palms and baobabs will be carefully protected in the 
Botanical Garden of Cayenne, an opportunity will be afforded future 
observers of following these plants in their growth, with a perfect 
assurance of being correct as to their age. 

Particular trees of different kinds have occasionally acquired re- 
markable dimensions and lived to great ages in Europe. An elm is 
mentioned which grew on the promenade of Merges, the age of which, 
reckoned from the number of concentric layers, must have been 
three hundred and thirty-five years ; its trunk was above 18 feet in 
diameter. The lime is another tree which in temperate countries 
sometimes grows to a great size. The one planted at Freiburg to 
commemorate the victory of Morat in 1476, in 1831 was 14^ feet in 
diameter. Near the same place there is another tree of the same 
kind which must be older than the last, inasmuch as it was already 
celebrated for its size a century ago ; in 1831 this tree was upwards 
of 36 feet in circumference, and about 72 feet in height. The 
lime-tree of Neustadt is scarcely less curious for its size and the 
immense spread of its branches than for the historical circumstances 
connected with it. Looking back to old documents, this tree must 
already have been of great size in 1229 ; in a poem written in 1408 
we are told that this tree was then supported by sixty-seven props ; 
in 1654 it had eighty-two stone pillars to support its branches, and 
in 1831 the number had increased to one hundred and six. The cir- 
cumference of the trunk at 6| feet from the ground measured very 
nearly 39 feet. An old measurement made one hundred and fifty 
years before corresponds very nearly with this, a fact which shows 
that in the course of a century and a half the trunk of the lime-tree 
of Neustadt had not grown perceptibly. It is said to be from seven 
to eight hundred years old. The old lime-tree of Chaille in 1801 
was upwards of 49 feet in circumference. 

The beech grows rapidly while young ; but in more advanced age 
with extreme slowness. In 1818 Deluc saw several beeches near 
Geneva, the trunk of which was from 14 to 16 feet in diameter. 

De Candolle measured a larch two hundred and fifty-five years 
old, the trunk of which was upwards of 5i feet (5.84 ft.) in diame- 
ter ; and a larch of no more than fifty-four years growth has been 
measured which was more than 3.j feet in diameter. 

The celebrated chestnut-tree of Mount Etna has been stated to be 
upwards of 206^ feet in girth, (about 68 feet in diameter,) and must 
therefore be the largest tree described up to the present time ; but 
the tree has been supposed to be formed by several trunks springing 
from a common root which have grown together. Other remarka- 
ble chestnut-trees are mentioned. 

The plane is one of the largest growing trees of temperate coun- 
tries. A traveller, who visited the valley of Bujukdere, near Con- 
stantinople, met with a plane upwards of 95 feet in height, and the 
trunk of which, hollow internally down to the level of the ground, 

9 



98 SIZE A'ND LONGEVITY OF TREES. 

was more than 154 feet in circumference. A plane-tree, which 
grew in Norfolk, and was of the age of thirty-one years, was 7| 
feet in circumference, according to Hunter. Cypress-trees often 
attain to a very great age. In the garden of the palace of Grenada 
there is one which has stood for more than three centuries. At La 
Somma, near Milan, a cypress is shown which in 1794 was 17 feet 
in circumference.* 

Tradition has it that an orange-tree of the convent of St. Sabina 
at Rome, was planted by St. Dominic in the year 1200 ; this tree 
still exists. The orange-tree of Versailles, known under the name of 
the Francis I., is rather more than three hundred years old. In 1804, 
orange-trees were shown in the green-houses of Bonn three centu- 
ries old, and of which the trunks were more than 30 inches in cir- 
cumference. f In South America I had myself occasion to observe 
citron-trees of great age and of very considerable dimensions ; the 
trunks of several of these trees were nearly 27^ inches in diameter. 

A sycamore-tree of the village of Trons, in the Grisons, more 
than five hundred years old, is at this time between 8 and 9 feet in 
diameter. 

Many oaks have been described which had survived from eight 
hundred to one thousand years. Hunter saw one of these trees still 
extremely vigorous which was Hi feet in diameter. Evelyn, who, 
in his delightful work entitled Sylva, has given a list of the largest 
oaks known in his day in England, speaks of one growing in Wel- 
beck Lane which must have been eight hundred and sixty years old 
at least, and the diameter of whose trunk at the base was upwards 
of 12j feet. 

The olive is one of the trees that reaches a great age ; Picconi 
describes one of about seven centuries, and a circumference of about 
25 feet. 

The cedar of Lebanon grows vigorously and long, especially in 
soils that are sufficiently loose and permeable. According to M. 
Paul Vibray, of Sologne, the growth of this tree is more rapid than 
that of the coniferi in general. The cedars which grew on Mount 
Lebanon, and were measured by Nauwolff in 1574, and again by 
Labillardi^re in 1787, are generally allowed to be about the age of 
one thousand years. De Candolle, however, thinks that this age is 
exaggerated, and in contradiction with observations made on trees, 
the age of which is positively known. The following are a few of 
the measurements which have been reported by different observers : 

Ag^e. Feet circumfer. Observers. 

Cedar of Chelsea 83 12 

" ofParis i.. 40 7 Thouin. 

" ofditto 83 9.4 Loiseleur. 

" Environs of London •.-• 200 16 Hunter. 

" Ditto 113 14 Ditto. 

" of Mount Lebanon 600 36.4 Maundrel. 

" of Sologne 30 5 of Vibray. 

The yew, as is well known, produces a very hard, close, and en- 

* De Candolle, Physiologie, p. 994. f Ihid. p. 999. 



AGE FOR FELLING-. 99 

during wood, qualities which contribute greatly to the longevity of 
trees. Some of the oldest trees known have been yews. Here are 
a few that have been particularly described : 

Where they ^row. Probable fige. Circumference. Observers. 

County of Yark 1-220 28.2.> Pennant. 

Ditto 1220 13.85 Ditto. 

County of Surrey 1287 30.12 Evelyn. 

Fotheringal (Scotland) 2580 62.34 Pennant. 

CountyofKent 2800 C2.G0 Evelyn. 

According to Duhamel it is extremely difficult to fix upon any age 
as the best in a general way for felling trees, with a view to ob- 
taining the largest quantity of sound available timber. When the 
tree is too young, the timber has not all the excellence which it 
would have gained with greater age ; when too old, the pores are 
obstructed, and it has begun to decay in the parts of oldest forma- 
tion, so that it is not uncommon to find wood in the centre of the 
trunk which is lighter than that of the circumference. In trees 
which have already fallen into a certain state of decay, the worst 
timber in them is decidedly that which is taken from the centre at 
the base of the trunk ; and, indeed, the wood of the centre generally 
is then of inferior quality to that of more recent formation. Very 
aged timber always perishes first in those parts which have formed 
the most internal layers of the tree. It is, therefore, an obvious and 
grave error to suffer any tree to stand that has given the slightest 
indications of decay, inasmuch as that which is ordinarily the most 
valuable timber is likely to be altogether lost. Neither the age nor 
the dimensions are always the indications of the proper period for 
felling trees ; exposure, soil, situation, have immense influence upon 
their growth, vigor, and general qualities. Trees ought to be cut 
just when they are on the turn ; the proper moment is that which 
precedes immediately the alteration of the heart ; and although the 
destructive effects of age are principally felt in the interior, this in- 
testine disorder is nevertheless proclaimed externally ; the whole 
tree suffers when it 1ms taken place.* 

Duhamel has given the following characters, as indicating in- 
cipient decay, or decline of vigor in trees :t 

1. A tree, the top of which forms one uniform rounded mass, is 
not strong ; a vigorous tree always throws out certain branches 
which surpass the others in luxuriance of growth. 

2. When a tree comes into leaf prematurely in the spring, and 
particularly when the leaves turn, and fall prematurely in the autumn, 
it is a certain sign of weakness. 

3. When several of the top or leading branches of a tree die, 
even at their mere extremities, the wood in the centre is beginning 
to undergo alteration. 

4. When the bark quits the trunk, or becomes cracked here and 
there, we may be satisfied that the tree is far gone internally. 

5. Mosses, lichens, and funguses growing upon the bark, and red 

* Duhamel, Exi)loit. <Ies bois, t. i. p. 126. t Mem, t. i. p. 133. 



100 SEASON FOR FELLING. 

or black spots appearing upon it, always lead to a suspicion of change 
in the wood. 

6. When the sap is observed to flow from crevices in the bark, 
the death of the tree is at hand. 

In France, the cutting down of the smaller wood, such as is used 
for firing, takes place at from twenty to thirty years ; in the forests, 
the trees are commonly felled at from one hundred to one hundred 
and thirty years old, and a few trees are generally left as reserves, 
and for special purposes, till they have attained the age of from two 
hundred to two hundred and fifty years. 

The prevalent opinion among foresters, with regard to the proper 
season for felling, is, that it should be done when the sap is in the 
state of greatest repose, or when it is present in least quantity in the 
trees. The season fixed by the old law of France (1669) was from 
October to March inclusive. But the experiments of Duhamel tend 
to show that this is not actually the season when trees contain the 
smallest proportion of sap, and that fellings made at other times of 
the year have had very satisfactory results. All things well weighed, 
says the illustrious cultivator, our only safe guide in such matters is 
observation ; and from numerous experiments he concluded that 
there was actually as much sap in trees in winter as in summer, and 
that the spring and summer were the seasons most favorable for the 
speedy drying of the timber. Trees felled in summer were even 
found by Duhamel to yield timber which stood better and lasted 
longer than those that were cut down in winter ; while he found the 
wood of equal strength in either case. He concluded, therefore, 
that the season of the year at which timber was felled, had no in- 
fluence upon its quality or durability.* 

There is, in fact, no general rule observed in different countries 
as to the period at which timber is felled. The French still go on 
cutting from October to March ; ihe English fell in the winter. 
Convenience of different descriptions appears often to decide the 
question as to season. In order to procure bark for the tanneries, 
an act was passed by the English Parliament in 1603, prohibiting 
all felling of oak timber during the dead season, the penalty for in- 
fringement of the act being confiscation of the timber felled, or fine 
to the amount of twice its value. An exception, however, was still 
made in regard to timber destined for the public service in ship- 
building, &c. The price of bark afterwards rose to such a height, 
that it was found most profitable to cut in the spring ; and the prac- 
tice then became so general, that it by and by became necessary to 
offer premiums to induce proprietors of oak forests to fell timber in 
the winter season, for the sake of the British navy. The inhabitants 
of the county of Staflbrd appear at a somewhat early period to have 
sought to combine the advantages of the bark trade, with a fulfil- 
ment of the conditions that entitled them to the premium on winter- 
felled timber : they stripped the trees of their bark in the spring, 
and felled them the following winter. And Buffon and Duhamel 

* Duhamel, op. cit., t. i. p. 400. 



INFLUENCE OF SOIL ON TIMBER. 101 

showed subsequently, that by barking trees two or even three years 
before cutting them down, the white external wood could be render- 
ed nearly as hard and durable as the heart- wood of the tree. The 
recommendation of this procedure by these two distinguished men 
has not been followed in France ; but ever since 1770 the Dutch 
have adopted it, and it is now practised in many parts of England, 
particularly in the royal forests. 

It is quite certain that the nature of the soil exerts a considerable 
influence on the rapidity of growth and quality of the timber. The 
oak, the elm, &c., which have been grown in a damp soil, will not 
be so hard and compact as the same trees reared on a dry plot. 
Duhamel found, that although the trees which came in swampy bot- 
toms were very sappy and wet, they were still lighter than others 
of the same kind which had grown on a dry bank. Their white 
wood is thick in comparison with their hard wood ; they are brittle, 
and do not readily take or keep the shapes into which they are bent 
for ship-building or for staves ; and then their pores being large and 
open, and the whole wood being without that kind of varnish which 
impregnates good timber, they are readily permeable and unfit for 
the manufacture of vats, &c. — to say nothing of their being much 
more perishable. Such soft and porous timber is altogether im- 
proper for out-of-door constructions and for ship-building ; but it 
answers extremely well for indoor and cabinet work ; for the latter 
it has even certain advantages, it is easily wrought ; and once fairly 
seasoned, it is neither so apt to warp nor to crack as harder wood. 
It was very probably to guard against any excess of sap in trees, so 
prejudicial in a general way to the timber they yield, that the Ro- 
mans, according to Vitruvius, surrounded those that were destined to 
be cut down with a trench six months beforehand.* 

Trees which have grown in a good soil sufficiently drained have 
a fine bark, and their white wood is moderate or small in quantity. 
Their woody layers, indeed, are apt to be thinner generally, than 
those of trees that have grown in a wet soil ; but they are much 
harder and tougher, their grain is more even and close, and their 
pores are filled with an incrusting matter. They are consequently 
very heavy, even when thoroughly dry, and with time and due 
seasoning they become extremely hard, and in the same degree 
acquire durability. Duhamel was led by his experiments to conclude 
that the difference in point of density of timber grown in a marshy 
soil, and in one that was well drained and dry, was occasionally in 
the ratio of five to seven. 

The denser, dry-grown timber supports a relatively much greater 
weight without breaking than the marsh-grown timber ; and when 
it does yield, it gives way by a large and splintering surface, while 
the softer, less dense wood snaps off short. In brief, there is no 
question as to which kind of timber is the most valuable ; and meas- 
ures ought to be taken by landed proprietors and timber-growers at 
all times, not merely to grow trees, but to grow them under such cir- 

* Duhamr !, Expl. ties bois, t. i. p. 4(5. 
9* 



102 SEASONING. 

cumstances as shall ensure their yielding good available timber when 
they have come to maturity. 

If wet soils then be unfavorable to the grovi^th of timber of the 
highest value, in ship-building especially, what has been said must 
be taken as of application to those trees only which will grow in a 
great variety of soils. Damp and even marshy lands are well known 
to be favorable and even indispensable to certain trees, which, by 
their nature, delight in the neighborhood of water ; but these are 
generally kinds which are rather sought after for their height and 
lightness, than for their strength and durability.* 

Excessively dry soils, on the other hand, have also their disad- 
vantages for forest cultivation. In such ground, trees seldom ac- 
quire a sufficient growth to admit of their being applied to any im- 
portant purpose. It is certain, however, that absolute uniformity is 
never encountered in any piece of timber. The woody layers tbat 
have been formed in a wet or a dry year, in a warm or a cold year, 
feel and manifest the effects of the varying meteorological influences. 
They are of different thicknesses and densities, and, when carefully 
examined, are found to present the characters of the timber grown in 
soils of the most opposite description in point of wetness and dry- 
ness. f 

The treatment of trees after they are felled, the drying and sea- 
soning of the timber, are points of the highest importance. Standing 
trees contain a large quantity of water in their composition. After 
being cut down the moisture is dissipated, rapidly at first, much 
more slowly afterwards. This drying process is, of course, favored 
or retarded by the varying states of heat and moistness of the atmo- 
sphere. At length there comes a time when the wood no longer 
suffers any sensible change by longer exposure to the air ; or if it 
does, the change is now on the one side, now on the other, and 
merely in harmony with the hygrometric state of the atmosphere. 
Timber has then lost the whole of the moisture which it can get rid 
of by this mode of drying ; it is now fit for use ; it is seasoned, to 
use the technical expression. 

Timber is sometimes seasoned by previous total immersion in 
water. It has been held that this process favored the thorough dry- 
ing, by dissolving out certain deliquescent salts which are found in 
the sap, and prevented after-shrinking. However this may be, it is 
quite certain that in warm countries especially, it is advantageous to 
sink fresh-cut timber in water, with a view to prevent it from split- 
ting, apparently in consequence of drying too quickly. The old 
Venetians sank for a season in the sea, the oak timber which was 
destined for the construction of their galleys. Elm and beech, in 
particular, are said to improve greatly by the process of submersion 
in salt water, and to dry afterwards perfectly by simple exposure to 
the air.;}! 

* We helieve, however, that the live-oak, of which the American navy is con- 
structed, and which supplies one of the most imperishable kinds of timber known, 
grows exchisively in swamps. — Eng. Ed. 

t Duhamel, t. i., p. 57. 

t Knowles, Maritime and Colonial Annals, 1825. 



DECAV. 103 

Mr. John Knowles, who made a particular study of the means 
most generally employed in seasoning timber, has given an account 
of a series of experiments undertaken in the arsenals of Deptford 
and Woolwich, to determine the rate of drying and ultimate degree 
of dryness attained by timber variously treated — unprepared and 
prepared by previous subinersion in water. The pieces of timber 
were placed vertically, now in the position they had occupied in 
growing, now in that opposed to this ; and it was found that, circum- 
stances the same, they dried more quickly in the former than in the 
latter. The general results of these experiments were as follows : 
1st. That the pieces of timber were best seasoned by being kept 
about thirty months in the air, but in the shade and protected from 
wet. 2d. That they lost more of their original weight after six 
months' alternate immersions and dryings, than by being kept under 
water for six months and then dried. Ship-builders are generally 
agreed that it is not expedient to make use of timber until three 
years after it is cut.* 

Duhamel advises strongly, that in ship-building all timber from 
trees already on the decline should be rigorously rejected ; and this 
the rather, that the most careful examination often fails at first to 
perceive any alteration in the heart-wood of such trees, although it 
never fails to show itself by and by at a sufficient interval after the 
felling. This is undoubtedly a precept which it would be well to 
bear constantly in mind ; but timber does not always carry within 
itself the germs of its speedy decay ; and that which has been sea- 
soned with the most scrupulous care, and was originally of the best 
quality, does not escape the rot when it is placed under unfavorable 
circumstances, any more than that which was of inferior worth and 
less carefully treated. 

Wood appears to perish or decay through three principal a d ap- 
preciable causes, which all require similar conditions to con e into 
play, viz., stagnant air, sufficient warmth, and moisture. Like the 
generality of organic substances, wood, when moistened in contact 
with the oxygen of the air, and under the influence of a sufficiently 
high temperature, undergoes decomposition ofa kind which has been 
compared to a slow combustion, upon which we shall find occasion 
to say more by and by. It is with a view to escape this kind of de- 
cay as much as possible that timber is never, or ought never, to be 
employed in the construction of ships and buildings until it has been 
thoroughly seasoned. 

Besides this first cause of decay, which may be prevented in a 
great measure by using certain precautions, wood has still two re- 
doubtable enemies, insects and certain plants of the family of the 
cryptogamiffi. In one case, the wood perishes because it is fed upon 
by certain animals which live and grow at its expense ; in the other 
it decays because it serves as the soil to one crop of fungus after 
another which luxuriate on its surface, while their roots penetrate 
deeply into its interior. There is nothing in either accident which 

* Dupin, Ann. de Chiniie, t. xvii. p. 277. 



104 DRY-KOT. 

excites astonishment, now that we know the intimate constitution 
of wood. We know, in fact, that among the number of soluble 
principles which impregnate the woody tissue, there is an azotized 
matter analogous in its composition to those that exist so abundantly 
in all the ordinary esculent vegetables. There is, therefore, in wood 
ample nourishment for the insects which we find living on it ; and 
if I state now (reserving to myself the opportunity of demonstrating 
the fact) that all organic azotized matter becomes an active manure 
by decaying, we shall understand how it happens that plants, which 
have the power of living in dark, warm, and damp places, wax and 
multiply in the joistings of houses, and in the ribs and planks of 
ships, causing a dry rot, which separates the integral layers of the 
wood, and reduces the strongest beams to dust. 

The rapidity with which wood is, in some circumstances, devour- 
ed by insects is almost incredible. Some years ago the thermites, 
or white ants, spread in such strength through the docks and ar- 
senals of Rochelle and Rochefort, that in a very short space of time 
serious damage was done. A learned entomologist, M. Audouin, 
commissioned by the ministry to take information on the subject, 
reported that the ravages committed by these insects had been very 
considerable. But it is principally in warmer climates, vthere the tem- 
perature is steady throughout the year, and where there is no winter, 
that the thermites occasion the most alarming injury. At Popayan, 
for example, it is difficult to meet in a building, even of recent con- 
struction, with a piece of wood which is not gnawed and ant-eaten. 
The hardest and most compact woods do not always resist the at- 
tacks of these insects, which, further, do not spare every kind of 
odorous wood, cedar for instance. In such countries it is altogether 
imp> ssible to preserve books and papers. I remember, in connec- 
tion vith this matter, that having received instructions to examine 
the archives of Anserma, one of the oldest towns in Popayan, in 
1830, I found nothing but books illegible and in pieces ; neverthe- 
less, the date of the documents, which it was my business to consult, 
could not have been older than the year 1600. 

The dry rot, which results from the development and growth of 
cryptogamic plants upon wood, is the curse of navies. Mr. Knowjes 
is of opinion that this disease of timber has been known from the 
most remote antiquity ; he believes that he can even recognise dry- 
rot in the sore called house-leprosy, mentioned in the 14th chapter 
of Leviticus. A ship attacked by dry-rot, becomes in a very short 
space of time unfit for sea. The Foudroyant of 80 guns is often 
quoted as an instance of its destructive powers : launched in 1798, 
she had to be taken into dock and almost rebuilt so soon as 1802.* 

The fungi which induce dry-rot have been studied by Sowerby. 
Mr. Knowles signalizes two species in particular ; one of which he 
describes under the name of Xylostroma giganteum, the other under 
that of Boletus lacrymans. The Xylostroma does not extend beyond 
the part where it is developed ; but the Boletus, on the contrary, ie 

* Dupin, Ann, de Chiniie, t. xvii. p. 290. 



PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. 105 

propagated with frightful rapidity, and disorganizes deeply and to a 
great distance around the texture of the wood where it once appears. 
These fungi are generally found on board ship, between the planking 
and the ribs, in damp situations, and where the air is scarcely, if 
ever, changed.* 

The temperature most favorable to the development of dry-rot has 
been found to lie between 7° and 32° cent, or 45° and 90° F. These 
are the extreme limits : below the minimum vegetation languishes ; 
above the maximum, the fungi droop. With this piece of informa- 
tion it was hoped that vessels might be freed from dry-rot by raising 
the temperature sufficiently. The trials were made in winter in the 
" Queen Charlotte," the air in the lower part of the ship being raised 
as high as 55° cent, or 130° F. But the general result did not an- 
swer expectations ; for although the fungi were destroyed in the low- 
er part of the vessel, it was found that their growth was rather fa- 
vored in places at a certain elevation above the kelson. The warm 
air, in fact, as it rose through the timbers became robbed in its course, 
and deposited the greater portion of the moisture which it had taken 
up at a lower level. Above the orlop deck, consequently, there was 
just about the temperature and the quantity of moisture most favora- 
ble to the development of the fungi. The evil was therefore only 
transplanted, not destroyed. It was now proposed to heat the 
" 'tween decks" at the same time as the hold, making use of due 
ventilation ; but this method of p'-oceeding has not been put into prac- 
tice. 

The extreme slowness of the growth of trees stands in strong con- 
trast with the rapidity of their decay when they are reduced to the 
shape of timber and employed in constructions of almost every kind. 
In countries well advanced in civilization, every description of in- 
dustry tends to consume timber, at the same time that an increas- 
ing population is every day contracting the extent of forest land, 
and diminishing the number of trees grown. In some countries, in- 
deed, it is certain that the production of wood for all purposes, firing, 
&c., &c., is no longer in relation with its consumption. The price 
of the article, necessarily high, is therefore tending continually to 
rise ; and it is not surprising that various measures have been sug- 
gested and essayed of giving this perishable material greater dura- 
bility. 

The well-known great durability of certain trees, the teak, ebony, 
lignum-vita?, &c., naturally led to the conclusion that the fatty or 
resinous matters which they contain have the property of preserving 
the wood against the greater number of the ordinary causes of de- 
cay ; and unctuous and resinous matters appear in fact to liave been 
the means most anciently employed to preserve wood from the air, 
from moisture, and from the attacks of insects. But it is scarcely 
necessary, at the present time, to say that these varnishes only ac- 
complish the object proposed in their application in a very imperfect 
way ; paint and varnishes crack, rub, or scale off with the slightest 

♦ Dupin, -Vnn. dc Chimic ct do rhysUiue, t. .wii. p. 291, '.'e s6rio. 



106 PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. 

friction ; nor do they always remove the causes of internal decay; 
on the contrary, by preventing more complete dryness, they some- 
times even provoke or favor them, when applied to tender, that is, 
imperfectly seasoned wood. Merely laid on the surface, indeed, it 
has always been seen that varnishes of any kind were but indifferent 
protectors ; that a really good preserver ought to penetrate the sub- 
stance of the wood, and unite with the tissue itself. But herein lay 
the whole difficulty ; how was the needful penetration to be effected ] 
for the number of chemical substances, from which good effects 
might reasonably be anticipated, is pretty considerable, — unless in- 
deed we find ourselves prevented from using them by the considera- 
tion of the price; for it is imperative that any preservative proposed 
be extremely cheap. 

For a long time the only process for effecting the penetration of 
limber by substances proposed for its preservation was to macerate 
them for a longer or shorter time in a solution of the substance. 
But this means was found as tardy of accomplishment as it was or- 
dinarily imperfectly effected ; to have got to the heart of logs of 
large scantling, years would have been required. Any delay, how- 
ever, in such circumstances, is of itself a cause of enhanced price 
of the article. By and by a variety of processes, the element in one 
being pressure, in anothai" exhaustion, were put in practice, and very 
satisfactory results obtained. M. Breant showed, that by means of 
strong pressure he could fill the largest logs from one end to the 
other with any unctuous or resinous substance proposed, in the course 
of a few minutes. M. Moll, a learned German, proposed creosote 
introduced in the state of vapor by forcing, as an effectual means of 
preserving timber, which it probably would be found ; but the high 
price of the antiseptic, were there no other objections, would neces- 
sarily be an obstacle to its general employment. The same objection 
applies to the bichloride of mercury, (Kyan's patent;) and arsenic is 
inadvisable from its deleterious effects upon the animal econom}'. 
Some workmen are said to have lost their lives in consequence of 
working timber which had been impregnated with a solution of white 
oxide of arsenic. 

ft had been observed that vessels engaged in the lime-trade lasted 
long ; and then it was naturally thought that by impregnating the 
wood to be used for ship-building with lime it would be rendered 
more durable. But the result did not answer expectation ; the tim- 
ber treated with lime did not even seem to last the usual time.* 

Such was the state of the question when Dr. Boucherie made a 
highly important communication to the Royal Academy of Sciences 
on the preservation of timber. f Some estimate of its nature may 
be formed from the list of subjects discussed in this remarkable 
paper. 

1. To protect timber against dry-rot and the ordinary wet-rot. 

2. To increase its hardness and strength. 

3. To preserve its fle.\ibility and elasticity. 

* Dnpin, Ann. de Chimie, t. xvii. p. 236. 
t Idini, I. l.xxiv. p. 113. 



PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. 107 

4. To counteract its alternate contraction and expansion in conse- 
quence of the varying state of moistness and temperature of the 
atmosphere. 

5. To diminish its inflammability and combustibility. 

6. To give it a variety of permanent colors and odors. 

In the whole of his experiments M. Boucherie set out from this 
proposition, the truth of which appears indisputable and to require 
no comment, viz : That all the changes lohich wood undergoes pro- 
ceed or depend upon the soluble matters which it contains. In confor- 
mity with this idea, the first step towards giving durability to timber 
was, either to render these matters insoluble and inert, or to remove 
them entirely. M. Boucherie, therefore, in his first trials sought to 
render the matters insoluble by charging the wood with a substance 
capable of combining chemically and forming a precipitate with the 
sohible matter left by the sap. To resolve this problem, M. Boucherie 
investigated the reactions between the soluble matter of wood, which 
it was his object to precipitate, and a variety of low-priced chemical 
agents. He found that the pyrolignite of iron combined the greatest 
number of desirable properties : it is very cheap, the oxide of iron 
forms stable compounds with the greatest number of the organic 
substances which are found in the sap of vegetables, and, to conclude, 
the crude pyrolignite contains a notable quantity of creosote. 

The facts upon which ]\L Boucherie relies as proving the preser- 
vative powers of the pyrolignite of iron flow from numerous experi- 
ments performed either on vegetable substances which in themselves 
readily and rapidly undergo changes ; or upon billets of wood of 
different kinds. A quantity of flour, the pulp of carrots, beet-roots, 
&c., impregnated with the pyrolignite resist decomposition in a very 
remarkable manner in contrast with the same substances when they 
have not been prepared in any way. 

The wood which was selected for trial, was generally of the most 
perishable kind. In December, 1838, several empty hogsheads and 
barrels made of the best timber unimpregnated and impregnated with 
the pyrolignite were placed together in the dampest parts of the great 
cellars of Bordeaux. In August, 1839, it was easy to see that the 
unimpregnated tubs were alrea4y deeply stricken, and after from 
two to tiiree years they fell to pieces witli the slightest force ; the 
casks made of the prepared wood, however, were as sound as on 
the first day of the experiment.* 

M. Boucherie concluded from his experiments instituted with a 
view to the settlement of the question, that about V'oth of the weight 
of the wood in its green state of the pyrolignite was adequate to 
precipitate and render insoluble all the principles obnoxious to change, 
which were contained in the woody tissue. 

M. Boucherie, while he regards the pyrolignite of iron as at once 
the most powerful, and one of the cheapest preservatives of timber, 
nevertheless indicates several soluble salts, which are readily avail- 
able in consequence of their low price, and also very effectual when 

* Coniptes Eendiis, t. ii. p. 896. 



108 PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. 

the wood, which they are to preserve, is not kept constantly wet. 
Solutions of common salt, of chloride of lime, the mother-water of 
salt-marshes, &c., were all tried and found useful : casks, the wood 
of which had been prepared with the chlorides, after having been 
long kept in very damp cellars, came out as fresh as those which 
had been impregnated with the pyrolignite of iron ; the flexibility of 
the wood preserved with these alkaline and earthy salts was further 
as great as at the beginning of the experiment. 

Having now come to a conclusion in regard to the substances 
most effectual in preserving wood, the next business was to make 
them penetrate its tissue most intimately. Maceration, M. Bouche- 
rie soon found, like his predecessors in the same path, to be insuf- 
ficient, the substances in solution only penetrating a very little way. 
He then tried various processes of injection ; but all inferior to that 
imagined by M. Breant, and therefore less effectual. He then be- 
thought him of effecting the needful penetration of the wood in the 
green state, and before it had been sensibly altered by drying and 
seasoning ; he asked himself if the force which determines the 
ascent of the sap might not be taken advantage of after the tree was 
cut down, as a means of determining the entrance of a solution of 
pyrolignite of iron ] And all his trials in this direction answered his 
expectations fully. M. Boucherie had, in fact, discovered a means 
of securing the penetration of the minutest pores of the largest log 
by a substance capalile of rendering it incorruptible. No one before 
M. Boucherie thought of taking advantage of an admitted physiolo- 
gical fact for such a purpose. He announces the principle upon 
which he proceeds in these terms : " If a tall tree be cut down at 
the proper season, and the bottom of the trunk be then immersed in 
a saline solution, weak or strong, the liquid is powerfully drawn up 
into the tree, penetrates its most intimate tissues, rises to its small- 
est branches, and even to its terminal leaves."* 

In the month of September, a poplar, upwards of 90 feet high and 
nearly 16 inches in diameter, was cut, and the bottom of its bole 
plunged in a vessel containing a solution of pyrolignite of iron mark- 
ing 8° of the areometer of Beaume ; in the course of six days it had 
absorbed upwards of 66 gallons of the fluid. 

In his first experiments, M. Boucherie procured the needful 
absorption by placing the bottoms of his trees in vessels containing 
the solution ; but this mode of proceeding was obviously full of dif- 
ficulties and open to many objections : the weight of a green tree of 
large size, with the whole of its top and branches, is often enormous, 
and to raise a mass of the kind once down again into the perpen- 
dicular was no easy task ; it implied recurrence to certain mechani- 
cal means which are not always at hand, and necessarily expensive. 
M. Boucherie, therefore, tried other modes of making the trees 
absorb ; he adapted a sac of impermeable material to the bottom of 
the trunk laid on the ground, and into this sac he poured his solution, 
and this method answered very well. He next took advantage of 

* .Villi, lie Ch'miie, t. l.xxiv. p. 13-'. 



PRESEKVATION OF TIMBER. 109 

one or more of the roots to effect the imbibition. He next bored a 
hole into the bottom of the trunk, still erect ; and having brought 
the cavity thus made to communicate with a reservoir, he still suc- 
ceeded. This last plan was still further simplified in proceeding as 
follows : the trunk of the tree is pierced by an auger through nearly 
the whole diameter. Into the auger-hole thus made, a narrow saw 
is passed, by working which on either side, the trunk is divided in- 
ternally to a very considerable extent, and the majority of its sap- 
vessels are thus cut across and made accessible. An impervious 
cloth is then tied round the trunk, below the opening, and this is 
made to communicate with the reservoir of liquid.* 

M Boucherie was almost necessarily led, in tlie course of his ex- 
periments, to inquire whether the absorbing power of trees differed 
at different seasons or not. He ascertained by trials made in the 
months of December and February, that though in the oak, the horn- 
beam, and the plane, the solution of pyrolignite of iron always rises 
several feet, and even several yards, yet that in the colder season of 
the year, it never rises so high as it does in summer, in spring, and 
especially in autumn, the season in which the power of ascent is 
most remarkable. This conclusion is obviously of interest physio- 
logically. It proves that if winter be a season of repose for the sap, 
it is not so absolutely. There is one remarkable exception to the 
general fact now announced, and this occurs among the resinous 
trees that keep their leaves till the spring. It has been ascertained, 
by direct experiment, that the ascent of the sap continues through 
the whole course of the winter in the cone-bearing trees, and this to 
such an extent, that it is always possible to impregnate every part 
of their trunk by the way of simple absorption at any period of the 
year. As M. Boucherie remarks, this fact might even have been 
foreseen from the fresh and green state of the leaves of these trees. 

It now became important, in connection with the practical appli- 
cation of M. Boucherie's views, to ascertain whether or not the 
penetration was energetic in the ratio of the vigor of the tree itself, 
in proportion as it was more numerously provided with branches, 
more thickly covered with leaves. Experiment showed that the 
penetration still takes place after the removal of the greater number 
of branches, provided only the leading bough or terminal crown be 
left. A stem furnished with a number of leafy branches continues, 
as has been said, to imbibe, though separated from the roots ; but 
for how long a time will it continue to do so 1 This was a capital 
point to determine. At the end of September, the bottom of a pine- 
tree, about 14 inches in diameter, was first put into the solution 48 
hours after it had been felled ; nevertheless the imbibition was com- 
plete. In June the same success attended the experiment made on 
a plane that had been cut for thirty-six hours. Still it is certain 
that the penetration takes place with so much the more energy as it 
is arranged close upon the time of the felling. The power by which 
it is determined declines rapidly after the first day is passed, and by 

* Boucherie, Ann. de Chimie. t. Ixxiv. p. 131, 2c s6rie 
10 



110 PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. 

the tenth day it is almost entirely gone. In favorable circumstances 
these ten days suffice to effect the complete impregnation of the 
largest stem. In one of his experiments upon a poplar, M. Boucherie 
saw the absorbed liquid reach the height of about 95 feet in seven 
days. 

In the white woods it is found that there is an axis of variable 
diameter in different cases which escapes or rather which resists 
impregnation. In hafd woods the parts which are not penetrated 
are the inner or undermost circles of the heart. M. Boucherie, after 
having ascertained these facts, explains them thus : in the white 
woods, according to the testimony of the workmen, the central part 
which resists the penetration is at once the weakest and the most 
perishable portion of the log ; there is no longer any circulation, any 
life there ; it is dead wood interred in the midst of the living woody 
layers. This absence of penetration of the woody tissue appears, 
on some occasions, elsewhere than in the centre of the trunk and 
branches ; it presents itself under the most various forms and in 
different parts of the trunk : it appears to depend, as has been said, 
on the presence of wood abstracted from the influence of vital phe- 
nomena, and which, impenetrable itself, presents a barrier or an ob- 
stacle to the passage of the solution to other parts ; it is thus that a 
knot, or a piece of rotten wood, is generally found as the starting 
point of the zones that have escaped imbibition. As to the non- 
penetration of the most central parts of the heart of oak, elm, &c., 
M. Boucherie views it as affording unquestionable proof of the fact 
that there the living juices of the tree had long ceased to circulate. 

The distinction generally drawn between the white or soft, and 
the perfect or hard wood, rests on the differences of color presented 
by a transverse section of the trunk. In the oak, for example, the 
external and nearly white concentric layers are held as the soft and 
valueless portion of the log, and are commonly hewn away in squar- 
ing it ; the darker, more central portions constitute the heart-wood, 
the valuable timber. But, according to M. Boucherie, the distinc- 
tion is different when the fact of penetrability is taken as the guide, 
and all that portion of the trunk which imbibes is considered as 
alburnum, or soft wood, and all that does not imbibe is regarded as 
hard wood. The alburnum in this way is so much extended that it 
may be found constituting three-fourths of the whole mass of the 
trunk. Once introduced, the pyrolignite of iron, according to M. 
Boucherie, is not only useful in preserving the wood, it also in- 
creases the density of the timber. Impregnated with this salt of 
iron, wood becomes so hard as powerfully to resist the tools of the 
carpenter and joiner, who even complain of the increased difficulty 
with which it is worked. 

Flexibility and elasticity in timber are qualities in request for cer- 
tain purposes, particularly for ship-building. The fir timber of the 
north of Europe is much more prized than that of the south, espe- 
cially for masting, on account of its greater flexibility and elasticity, 
qualities which appear to depend in a great measure on the quantity 
of mo'sture retained ; to increase these qualities M. Boucherie has 



PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. Ill 

even introduced by imbibition a deliquescent salt, such as the muri- 
ate of lime, which retains moisture powerfully, as is well known, 
and seems to have the power of giving a remarkable degree of sup- 
pleness to wood. The experiments, contrived to show the effects 
of deliquescent salts, were made upon deal, which is allowed to be 
one of the mo"st brittle woods. After having impregnated it witli 
concentrated solutions it was sawed into very thin veneers, some of 
which I have seen in the possession of M. Boucherie, which after 
being strongly twisted and bent in various senses, immediately re- 
gained their original flatness and evenness when they were left 
free. 

Warping, or shrinking, is occasioned Ijy alternate shrinking and 
swelling in consequence of varying hygrometric states of the atmo- 
sphere. When timber is worked before it is thoroughly seasoned, — 
and this is apt to happen in regard to pieces of large scantling es- 
pecially — the shrinking is of course extremely conspicuous when the 
time necessary to complete desiccation has elapsed. It is this in- 
convenience which makes it imperative on builders of all kinds, sliip- 
builders more especially, to keep stocks which necessarily absorb 
a considerable amount of capital. It has long been a question with 
engineers to find a remedy for this state of things. Seasoning, in- 
deed, is now effected somewhat more quickly by squaring the logs 
at the time the trees are cut down ; but the loss of time is still very 
considerable. The mode of seasoning by the stove or vapor has 
been abandoned as too costly. 

After having found that the shrinking and separation of pieces of 
carpentry did not begin to take place until the timber was upon the 
point of losing the last third of the moisture wliich it contained at 
the time of being cut, M. Boucherie thought that to prevent all 
warping and shrinking it would be enough to retain this quantity of 
water in combination with the woody tissue ; in other words, to pre- 
vent complete desiccation. Facts have proved the correctness of 
this view. Pieces of wood kept at a certain unchanging degree of 
moistness by means of a deliquescent salt infused into their pores, 
do not change their bulk or form, in spite of extreme variations in 
the hygrometric state of the air. Such pieces of wood, however, 
exhibit great differences in point of weight under the influence of 
different circumstances. 

Several planks of great breadth and extremely thin were prepared 
with chloride of lime and joined together ; some of them were left 
unpainted, others were painted on one side, or on both sides ; after 
the lapse of a year these planks were found not to have shrunk or 
warped, while similar planks of the same thickness and kind of 
wood, but unprepared, were found to have cast in an extraordinary 
way.* 

M. Boucherie has done more than this ; he has not only had it in 
view to preserve wood and to prevent it from warping, qualities so 
desirable, — he has made use of the same faculty of imbibition to im- 

"•- Boucherie, op. cit. p. 151. 



112 PRESERVATION OF TIMBER. 

pregnate the wood with a variety of beautiful colors, and thus to 
give even the most common kinds tints that will admit of their being 
used in the construction of costly furniture. The pyrolignite of 
iron alone gives an agreeable brown tint that harmonizes excellently 
with the natural color of the harder parts of so many trees which 
usually resist penetration. By following up the pyrolignite with an 
infusion of niitgalls or oak-bark, the mass of the wood is penetrated 
with ink, which presents a black, blue, or gray color, according to 
circumstances ; a solution of another salt of iron succeeded by one 
of prussiate of potash will cause a precipitate of prussian blue in the 
wood, &c. ; in short, by the numerous reactions of this kind with 
which chemistry is familiar, a great variety of colors may be ob- 
tained. 

Among the number of useful properties communicated to wood by 
impregnation with saline solutions, that of being rendered little apt 
for combustion ought not to be omitted. M. Gay-Lussac was the 
first who thought of rendering vegetable tissues incombustible by 
means of saline impregnations.* By incombustible, we are not to 
understand unalterable by a red heat; for every one must see that 
the protecting power of no salt can extend so far as this ; but tissues 
which take fire very readily, and burn with great rapidity, cease 
from giving any flame, and merely smoulder, after they have been 
impregnated with certain salts ; they take fire with difficulty, go 
out of themselves, become charred, and are incapable of propagating 
fire. And this is exactly what happens with wood which has been 
properly charged : it burns, and is reduced to ashes with extreme 
slowness, so that two huts exactly alike, built one of charged wood, 
and the other of ordinary wood, having been set fire to at the same 
moment, the latter was already burned to the ground, when the in- 
terior of the former was scarcely charred. f 

The ingenious process of impregnating wood by the way of vital 
inspiration is not without certain objections. In the first place, it 
can only be performed at those periods of the year when the sap is 
in motion, and the trees are covered with their leaves. This time, 
however, is limited to a few months of the year, and the usual prac- 
tice being to fell timber in the winter, wont and usage are opposed 
to cutting down trees in the spring and autumn. To meet these 
objections, M. Boucherie engaged in new experiments, which led 
him to a means of impregnating timber at all seasons, in winter as 
well as spring and autumn, and in a very short space of time ; this 
second method is applicable to wood that has already been squared 
as well as to the round trunk, provided it has been recently felled. 

To impregnate timber by this process, the logs are placed verti- 
cally, and the upper extremities are fitted with an impermeable sack 
for the reception of the saline solution destined to charge them ; the 
fluid enters from above, and almost at the same moment the sap is 
seen to begin running out below. There are some woods which 

♦ Ann. de Chimie, t. xviii. p. 21), 2e serie. 
t Idem, t. Ixxiv. p. 152, 2e serie. 



rilESERVATION OF TIMBER. 113 

include a large quantity of air in their tissues ; in this case the flow 
does not go on until this air has been expelled ; once begun, it goes 
on without interruption. Tlie operation is terminated when the 
tluid, whic-h drips from the lower part, is of the same nature as that 
which is entering above. In my opinion this method must be pre- 
ferable to that by aspiration. In the second mode of proceeding, in 
fact, we accomplish our object by a true displacement ; almost the 
whole of the sap is expelled, and the saline solution introduced has 
only to subdue or neutralize the very small quantity of soluble 
organic matter which may remain adhering to the woody tissue. 
By accomplishing such a displacement by means of simple water we 
should undoubtedly obtain results favorable to the preservation of 
timber, inasmuch as we should have freed it from almost the whole 
of those matters vvhiclr are regarded as the most alterable them- 
selves, and the first cause of rotting in timber. The rapidity with 
which the fluid introduced is substituted for the sap which it dis- 
places, and the quantity of this expelled sap which may be readily 
collected, exceeds any thing that could have been imagined before 
making the experiment ; thus the trunk of a beech-tree about 52^ 
feet in length by SSf inches in diameter, and consequently forming 
a cube of somewhat more than 29 feet and a half, gave in the course 
of twenty-five hours upwards of 330 gallons of sap, which were re- 
placed by about 350 gallons of pyroligneous acid. The liquid which 
penetrates in this way acts so effectually in displacing the sap, that 
M. Boucherie says we can readily procure or exti-act by its means 
the saccharine, mucilaginous, resinous, and colored juices contained 
in trees. It would, perhaps, be possible, and I beg to suggest this 
idea to colonial planters, to apply the method of displacement to the 
extraction of the coloring matters of dye-woods. The trade in dye- 
woods does not extend beyond localities favorably situated for ex- 
portation, so that at a certain distance from the shores of the ocean, 
or the banks of rivers, it is found absolutely impossible to carry on 
a trade, the material of which is so heavy and bulky as timber. 
The greater number of the coloring matters found in wood being 
soluble, it is possible to export them in the state of extract. Various 
attempts of this kind have already been made, and if they have not 
been successful, the obvious cause of this lies in the method which 
has been followed, and which has hitherto consisted in treating the 
wood reduced to chips by means of boiling water, and then reducing 
the colored solution obtained ; but it is obvious that in the remote 
forests of America, or of Africa, where all mechanical means are 
wanting, nothing but failure could attend upon such a procedure. 
By the method of M. Boucherie, the main difficulties appear to be 
got over ; there is nothing more to be done, in fact, than to get the 
trees into the state of logs, and these are generally readily trans- 
portable, after which one or more evaporating pans seem all that 
are further necessary. 

Dye-woods. — The greater number of these woods belong to the 
family of leguminosa; ; the principal kinds met with in trade are : 

1. Mahogany wood, {hcEmaloxylon campeckianuin,) of a reddish 
10* 



114 SUGAR. 

yellow, which becomes brown with age ; this wood, besides a variety 
of alkaline and earthy salts, of volatile oil and unazotized matter, 
contains a particular coloring principle, called hematine, discovered 
by M. Chevreul * 

The mahogany grows in the hot intertropical regions of America ; 
Mexico and some of the West India islands export considerable 
quantities. 

Pernambuco or Brazil-wood is the name given in trade to the 
trunks of several trees of the genus CcEsalpinia. The CcBsalpinia 
crista of Jamaica, the C. sappan of Japan, the C. echinala of Santa 
Martha, afford kinds that are very much prized. In point of chemi- 
cal composition Brazil-wood agrees with Campechy wood ; the col- 
oring matter which characterizes it has been named Braziline by M. 
Chevreul; it is obtained in. small crystals of an orange color. 

This wood comes to Europe in fagots of about 39 inches in 
length. Red Saunders-vvood is furnished by the Ptoei-ocarpus san- 
talinus ; it contains a peculiar dye-stuff, santaline, observed by M. 
Peltier. t 

To conclude, the yellow dye-woods of commei-ce are Fustic, Rhus 
cotinus, of the family of turpentine trees, a native of the south of 
Europe, and the Cuba and Tampico woods, which are probably va- 
rieties of the Morus tincloria. 

OF SUGAR. 

Sugar is met with in almost every part of vegetables ; it has been 
found in flowers, in leaves, in stems, and in roots. It is less abun- 
dant in seeds ; and it may even be said that the quantity of saccha- 
rine matter contained in vegetables in general is invariably diminished 
at the period of formation of the seed. Sugar, consequently, as well 
as starch, appears to contribute to the production of the seed. 

The very characteristic taste of sugar generally suffices to pro- 
claim its presence ; nevertheless, it would be a great mistake did 
we rely upon this character alone for discovering the presence of 
sugar ; several substances possess a very decided sweet taste, with- 
out being on that account sugar, in the sense which chemists attach 
to the name. True sugars, according to chemists, have one property 
which distinguishes them from all substances with which they may 
have, in other respects, the greatest analogy ; this characteristic 
property is that of becoming changed, under the influence of water, 
a suitable temperature, and contact with yeast, into alcohol and car- 
bonic acid. It is certain, nevertheless, that certain bodies which do 
not belong to the chemical genus, sugar, may, under the influence of 
fermentation, yield alcohol. I have already quoted starch as coming 
under this head ; but it has been distinctly ascertained, as I have also 
said, that such substances, under the influence of the ferment itself, 
are first changed into sugar, which subsequently undergoes the vi- 
nous fermentation. 

* Chimie appliquee a la teinture, aOe lecon, p. 88. 

t Chevreul, Chemistry applied to dying, 30th lecture, p. 94. 



SUGAR. 115 

It is admitted at the present time that fermentable sugars must be 
divided into two principal species, in harmony with characters which 
are most easily appreciated. One of these presents itself in the 
shape of hard, transparent crystals, and is met with in sufficient 
quantity to be profitably extracted from the juice of the cane and the 
beet, the sap of the maple and of certain palms ; the other is obtained 
with some difficulty in the solid state, being most frequently and 
readily procured in the form of sirup ; the taste of this is less sweet, 
less decided ; it exists in the grape and the greater number of 
fruits. The chemical characters of these two kinds of sugar, which 
are designated cane-sugar and grape-sugar, are somewhat different ; 
and the elegant researches of M. Biot have shown, that from some 
of their physical properties, particularly the action of their solutions 
upon polarized light, they cannot be regarded as constituting one and 
the same species. In the vegetable kingdom, these two kinds of 
sugar are frequently met with mixed ; and there are certain chemi- 
cal means which enable us readily to transform cane-sugar into 
grape-sugar. The inverse transformation has not yet been accom- 
plished ; but there is nothing which leads us to conclude that it is 
impossible ; and the time, perhaps, is not very remote when the 
sugar which is manufactured from potato-starch may be changed 
into crystallized sugar, similar to that which is obtained from the 
cane. 

Crystallized sugar. Cane-sugar is readily obtained in large 
transparent crystals, which are known under the name of sugar- 
candy. Sugar is fusible : under the action of a regulated tempera- 
ture, it acquires a dark-red color, and passes into the state of cara- 
mel; a higher temperature effects its decomposition. It is much 
less soluble in alcohol than in water ; highly concentrated alcohol, 
indeed, only dissolves an extremely small quantity of sugar. 

M. Peligot's analysis of cane-sugar shows it to be composed of — 

Carbon 42.1 

Hydrogen 6-4 

Oxygen 51.5 

100.0* 

Such is the composition of sugar dried at the temperature of boil- 
ing water ; but the substance, like the majority of organic matters, 
still contains a certain proportion of constitutional water, which it 
abandons when it combines with certain bases. Thus sugar com- 
bines with oxide of lead, and forms a true saccharate, in which the 
sugar, deprived of its water of constitution, plays the part of an acid ; 
this combination, which presents itself to us under the form of white 
mammillated crystals, analyzed by M. Peligot, would indicate the 
following as the composition of anhydrous sugar — 

Carbon 47. 1 

Hydrogen 5.9 

Oxygen 47.0 

100.0 

* Annales de Chiniie, vol. Ixviii. p. 1J4, 2e s6rie. 



116 SUGAR. 

Ordinary sugar, deprived of its water of composition in any other 
way, has the same elementary composition ; thus caramel obtained 
by heating sugar to 180" cent., (356" Fahr.,) until it no longer loses 
watery vapor, has, according to M. Peligot, the composition of an- 
hydrous sugar, such as it is found in combination with oxide of lead. 

Setting aside all theoretical considerations, it is obvious that to 
have anhydrous sugar reconstituted ordinary hydrated sugar, it were 
necessary to add to 100 parts 11.76 of water, containing 1.3 hydro- 
gen and 10.46 oxygen ; the 111.76 parts then contain, in elements : 

Carbon 47.1 percent. 42.1 common sugar. 

Hydrogen 7.2 " 6.4 " 

0.\ygen 57.4fi " 51.5 " 

111.7G 100.0 

Common sugar may therefore be viewed as composed of 100 anhy- 
drous sugar, and 11.8 water. 

The whole of the sugar which comes from South America and 
the West Indies, and a large proportion of that which comes from 
the East Indies, is extracted from the juice of the sugar-cane. 

In America three principal varieties of sugar-cane are cultivated, 
the Creole, the Batavian, and the Otaheitan. The Creole cane has 
the leaf of a deep green, the stem slender, the knots very close to- 
gether. This species, a native of India, reached the new world 
after having passed through Sicily, the Canaries, and the West In- 
dia islands. The Batavian cane is indigenous in the island of Java ; 
its foliage is very broad, and has a purple tint ; the sap of this vari- 
ety is much employed in making rum. The Otaheite cane is that 
which is most extensively grown at the present time ; it was intro- 
duced into the West India islands and neighboring continent by Bou 
gainville. Cook, and Bligh, in their several voyages, and is certainly 
one of the most important acquisitions which the agriculture of trop- 
ical countries owes to the voyages of naturalists. This variety of 
cane grows with extraordinary vigor : its stem is taller, thicker, and 
richer in juice than that of the other species. I observed it along 
the whole coast of Venezuela, of New Grenada, and of Peru ; far 
from having degenerated by its transplantation to the American con- 
tinent, it appears to have preserved all its original qualities without 
alteration. 

The sugar-cane is propagated by cuttings. Pieces of the stem 
about 18 or 20 inches long, and having several buds or eyes, are 
placed two or three together in holes a few inches in depth, and are 
covered with loose moist earth. From a fortnight to three weeks 
are required for the shoots to show themselves above ground. The 
space to be left between each clump of plants depends much on the 
fertility of the soil ; in the most fertile soils the distance may be 
about a yard, or a little more ; and along the rows the spaces may 
be about 18 inches. Where land is of no great value it is found 
inore advantageous to give greater space, and so to favor the access 
of the air and the light. It is not uncommon to see plantations where 
the canes are spaced at distances of between 4 and 5 feet. The 



SUGAR-CANE. 117 

time at which the setting of the slips takes place cannot be defini- 
tively indicated ; it depends entirely upon the epoch at which the 
periodical rains are anticipated. But in places where irrigation is 
possible, the setting goes on through all the months of the year. 
The holes for the reception of the slips are usually dug with a hoe, 
and a negro will make from sixty to eighty holes in the course of a 
day. \Yhen the ground has been previously ploughed, as it is in 
some of the West India islands, he will make twice as many. Loose 
rich soils, when they have a certain moisture, are the best adapted 
to the sugar-cane ; it does not thrive in an argillaceous soil, vihich 
drains with difficulty. In these moist soils the slips are not laid 
horizontally and covered, but with one end projecting a little way 
out of the ground. When the young shoots are covered with nar- 
row and opposed leaves, watering is particularly advantageous, and 
the plants are repeatedly hoed until they have acquired sufficient 
vigor to choke noxious weeds. About the 9th month after the plan- 
tation of the slips, the shaft of the sugar-caae begins to lose its 
leaves, the most inferior falling first, the others in succession, so 
that when arrived at maturity, it only presents a tuft of terminal 
leaves. The flowering generally takes place with the conclusion 
of the year; and the cane is held sufficiently ripe in from two to 
three months after this epoch, when the stem has acquired a yellow 
or straw color. The planters, however, are by no means agreed as 
to the proper period of the sugar-cane harvest, — some even insist 
upon cutting before the flowering, believing that the quantity of su- 
gar diminishes on the appearance of the flower. It is unquestiona- 
ble, however, that the period that elapses between the planting and 
the harvest, must vary with the nature of the soil, and especially 
with that of the climate ; while in some places the cane may be cut 
when it is a year old, doubtless there are others where it requires to 
stand from fifteen to sixteen months. In Venezuela, where the Ota- 
heite cane is grown at the level of the sea, and where the mean tem- 
perature of the year is between 81° and 82° Fahr., the cane ripens, 
according t\, Colonel Codazzi, in eleven months. In districts at 
greater elevations under the same parallels of latitude, where the 
climate is of course not so hot, the cane requires a longer time to 
come to maturity; where the mean temperature is about 78° Fahr., 
twelve months are required ; where it is about 74° Fahr., fourteen 
months become necessary ; and where it is no more than about 67° 
Fahr., sixteen months are requisite.* The Otaheite cane grows to 
very different heights ; in very favorable circumstances it will reach 
a height of 16 feet and upwards, but its general height may be stated 
at from 9\ to 10|^ feet. Great cane plantations are divided into 
squares of from 100 to 120 yards on the side, each of which coming 
to maturity in succession, the labor is easily performed, both in re- 
gard to field-work and the manufacture of the sugar. 

The cane is cut close to the root, and before being carried to the 
mill, the terminal tuft of leaves is struck off. These heads in the 

* Codazzi, Geography of Venezuela, p. 141. 



118 SUGAR-CANE. 

green state afford excellent food for horses and cattle ; when dry 
they are used for thatching houses. After the first cutting, fresh 
sprouts arise, which require no other attention than hoeing. In good 
soils one planting will yield five or six harvests by successive 
shoots ; but I have heard planters affirm, that the produce in sugar 
diminishes from year to year. In Venezuela, cane-pieces are re- 
planted every five or six years. 

The cane with its top struck off is carried to the mill, where the 
juice is expressed, and the stems, which are spoken of under the 
name of trash, are dried and used as fuel. 

The expressed juice contains crystallizable sugar, an azotized 
substance analogous to albumen, and some saline matters dissolved 
in a large quantity of water, which is dissipated by boiling, and the 
sugar finally won by crystallization. The manufacturing process is 
conducted with very different degrees of perfection in different 
places. In some the produce is obtained almost without admixture 
of molasses, in others the quantity of this article which drains away 
from the sugar is very large. It is now generally agreed that mo- 
lasses proceeds in great part from imperfections in the manufacturing 
processes employed, especially to changes which the sugar under- 
goes in the course of its concentration by boiling at a high tempera- 
ture. By the employment of what are called vacuum pans of vari- 
ous construction — pans from which the pressure of the atmosphere 
is removed either by the air-pump, or the condensation of the vapor 
as fast as it is formed, rapid evaporation is eff"ected at a temperature 
much below that of boiling water, by which it is found that the rela- 
tive quantity of sugar to that of molasses is greatly increased. It 
was long believed, indeed, and that on the authority of the first 
chemists, that there were two kinds of sugar contained in the sugar- 
cane, one crystallizable, the other uncrystallizable, and constituting 
the molasses or treacle. The researches of M. Peligot* have 
shown definitively that this conclusion is erroneous, that the cane con- 
tains no sugar that is not crystallizable, and that the pre-existence 
of uncrystallizable sugar or molasses is entirely chimerical. M. 
Plagne had indeed come to the same conclusion some considerable 
time ago — as far back as 1826 ; but his labors were not made known 
by publication till 1840. M. Casaseca, professor of chemistry at 
Havana, has very lately confirmed these conclusions, so important 
for the sugar husbandry of the world. f The composition of the 
juice of the sugar-cane is therefore less complex than it was once 
believed to be ; making abstraction of very minute quantities of an 
albuminous azotized substance, of several salts and a little silica, 
substances which altogether do not amount to more than two or 
three hundredths, cane juice may be said to consist of water and of 
crystallizable sugar in the proportion of from 17 to 20 per cent. J 
The Otaheite cane analyzed by M. Peligot actually yielded : 

* Ann. Maritimes et Coloniales, Aug. 1842. 

t Vide Comptes Rcndus, 1844. % Peligot, op. cit 



SUGAR-CANE. 



119 



Wafer 72.1 

Woody matter 9.9 

Soluble matter (sugar) 18.0 

100.0 

This conclusion was verified by M. Dupuy at Guadaloupe in 1841, 
who, operating on the spot, found the composition to be as follows : 

Water 72.0 

Woody matter 9.8 

Soluble matter (sugar) 17.8 

SalU •• 0.4 

100.0 

The analyses of the Creole cane made by M. Casaseca at Havana 
appear to indicate a larger quantity of woody fibre : 

Water. 65.9 

Wood 16.14 

Sugar 17.7 

100.0 

The quantity of sugar yielded by the cane, differs considerably. 
M. Codazzi assigns 6 and 15 per cent, as the extremes, and 7-^ per 
cent, as the mean. M. Dupuy gives 7.1 per cent, as the average. 
The quantity is, of course, first and most intimately connected with 
the quantity of juice obtained. But the produce of juice is extremely 
variable. In Guadaloupe, the juice varies between 56 and 62 per 
cent, of the cane subjected to pressure. The generality of Jfcills do 
not, in fact, enable us to obtain more than about 56 per cent. At 
New Orleans the usual quantity obtained is said to be 50, and in 
Cayenne only 36 per cent. At Havana, according to M. Casa- 
seca, the riband cane yields 45, the crystalline 35, and the Otaheitan 
56 per cent, of juice. 

The Otaheite cane was examined by M. Peligot, under a variety 
of circumstances of age, growth, part of plant, &c. &c. The fol- 
lowing table contains the condensed results of his experiments : 



First shoots 

Second do. from original sprouts 
Third do. from second do. 
Fourth do. from third do. 

Inferior part of cane 

Middle part of do 

Superior part of do 

Knots 

Cane of eight months 

Cane of ten months 



Water. 


Soluble mat- 
ters (suo-ar.) 


Woody fibre. 


73.4 


17.2 


8.9 


71.7 


17-8 


10-5 


71.6 


16.4 


12-0 


73.0 


16.8 


10-2 


73.7 


15.. 5 


10-8 


72.6 


16.5 


10-9 


72.8 


15.5 


11.7 


70.8 


12.0 


17-2 


73.9 


18.2 


7.9 


72.3 


18.5 


9.2 



It would therefore appear, making exception always of the knots 
which occur in the course of a cane, that the composition of the 
plant in its various states and conditions, is almost identical. M. 
Peligot's important paper, while it informs us of the average com- 
position of the Otaheite cane, satisfies us that the gummy and mu- 



12(J STTGAR-CANE. 

cilaginous substances and the uncrysfallizable sugar, the existence 
of which was iield as deinoiistrated, are, in fact, nowise constituents 
of the sugar-cane. Whence we may conclude, with M. Peligot, that 
every drop of molasses which drains from the sugar is the produce 
of the manufacture ; an opinion to which I assent the more readily 
from having myself seen oftener than once the juice of the cane 
yield nothing but crystallizable sugar These analyses further de- 
monstrate, more powerfully than could any discussion, the imperfec- 
tion of the processes usually followed in manufacturing sugar. They 
prove, in fact, that in the mill rather more than a third of the whole 
juice contained in the cane is left in the trash. This loss might be 
considerably diminished were more perfect pressure employed in 
extracting the juice. But it appears that the planters are indisposed 
to crush the trash too much, as by this it is rendered less fit for fuel, 
a considerable quantity of which, by the present mode of manufac- 
ture, is indispensable. M. Dupree, however, says that by insisting 
on obtaining from 05 to 66 per cent, of juice in all cases, the trash is 
still left with all its value as a combustible. The trash on coming 
from the mill appears quite dry. I have seen some which, after 
having been pressed twice consecutively, looked as if it were im- 
possible by any further amount of pressure to express more liquid. 
Nevertheless, it was enough to taste this pressed cane, to be satis- 
fied that it still contained a considerable quantity of sugar. To 
procure this wdthout using more powerful machinery, M. Peligot 
propose!^ to steep the trash in water, and to press it a second time. 
By this means a weak juice is obtained, which, added to the first 
pressings, raises the produce of sugar from 7 to 10 per cent, upon 
the whole amount of cane employed. By following this process, 
suggested by theory, upon the great scale, M. Dupree has succeeded 
in obtaining ith more than the usual quantity of sugar without ma- 
king any change in his apparatus, and without finding the trash too 
much shaken to be burned under his coppers.* In some circum- 
stances the increase in the quantity of juice which this procedure 
implies, might be found an objection on account of the larger quan- 
tity of fuel required for its evaporation ; but wherever a supply of 
wood is to be had, M. Peligot's method ought undoubtedly to be ap- 
plied. 

The very dissimilar quantities of crystallizable sugar obtained from 
canes, which as we have seen all contain very nearly the same quan- 
tity of this substance, prove that the processes of concentration and 
purification of the sap also contribute to the loss which has been in- 
dicated. M. Peligot has pointed out several causes which concur to 
deteriorate sugar ; among the number: 1. A viscous fermentation 
which renders the sap thick and stringy, like mucilage, by which 
the boiling becomes difficult and the crystallization of the sugar 
which has escaped change, is rendered imperfect. 2. An acidity 
which takes place when the juice is not run at once into the coppers 
and boiled, an acidity which requires the addition of lime to destroy 

* Peligot, Maritime and Toloiiial Annals, August, 1842. 



StlGAR-CANE. 121 

or to prevent it. The alkaline earth, as I have had occasion to say, 
is by no means indispensable ; its utility under ordinary circumstan- 
ces is probably confined to assisting the defecation by forming an in- 
soluble precipitate with some of the organic substances which are 
always met with in small quantities in cane juice ; perhaps also to 
making an earthy soap with the fatty matters which adhere to the 
cane and are expressed in the crushing. When lime is added, to 
correct acidity, it forms an acetate or a lactate, salts which are pe- 
culiarly soluble, uncrystallizable, and which necessarily retain a 
quantity of sugar in the sirupy state. 3. The presence of certain 
mineral salts in the cane. Common salt, for instance, in combining 
with sugar forms a deliquescent compound, in which one part of salt 
is united with six parts of sugar ; such a compound as this of course 
renders a large quantity of sirup indisposed to crystallize. It is 
therefore impossible to be too cautious, according to M. Peligot, in 
tbe choice of manure for a cane-field ; that which contains any com- 
mon salt must needs be injurious in one way, however advantageous 
it may be in another. The entire absence of this salt in the soil of 
plantations which are very remote from the sea shore is perhaps one 
of the causes which increases the quantity of sugar obtained from 
the crop, and makes it more easily manufactured in such districts. 

M. Oodazzi reckons the quantity of white sugar produced by a 
hectare of land, (2.473 acres,) planted with the Otaheite cane in the 
province of Caraccas, at 1875 kilogrammes, or 36 cvvt. 3 qrs. 9 lbs. 
avoir. ; which is at the rate of 15 cwt. I qr. 10 lbs. per acre. 
Taking 7} per cent, as the average quantity of sugar obtained, the 
weight of cane brought to the mill must obviously have amounted to 
19134 kilog. or 18 tons, 15 cwt. 3 qrs. 10 lbs. ; or 7 tons, 11 cwt. 
3 qrs. 25 lbs. per acre. Assuming the average composition of the 
plant to be — 

Wood (dry) 11.0 

Sugar (minimuni) 15.5 

Wati.r .73.5 

100.0 
One acre of land will consequently yield a crop of — 

Tons. Cwt. Qjs. Lbs, 

Wood (dry) 16 2 24 

Sugar 1 3 2 6 

Water -5 U ^ 12 

~7 If "3 25 

The trash of the sugar-cane undergoes rapid fermentation : it soun 
exhales a distinct smell of vinegar, and almost the whole of the 
sugar which is left in it is destroyed. 

BEET-ROOT SUGAR. 

The presence of sugar in the beet was observed by Margraff; and 
Achard of Berlin by and by attempted the extraction of this sugar 
on the large scale ; but it was only during the period of the conti- 
nental system that the manufacture of sugar from the t^eet acquired 

11 



122 BEET AND BEET-SUGAR. 

such p&rfection in France as made it profitable. The beet so gen- 
erally cultivated at the present lime is derived, according to Thaer, 
from the Beta vulgaris. The two principal varieties of this root are 
the red beet, vi-hich has been grown for a very long lime in kitchen 
gardens, and the white beet. Between these two extremes there 
are numerous varieties having a flesh color of various intensity, a , 
yellow tint, &c. The seeds of the same plant in fact frequently 
produce varieties of decidedly different shades of color; the red and 
the white beet, however, appear to be the most constant; and Thaer has 
said that the intermediate varieties are crosses between them. 

The field beet has a large root which grows in great part above 
the ground ; it is a very hardy plant, which has been cultivated for 
a very long time in various parts of the continent as food for cattle, 
and is now also very common in England. The root, which has 
hitherto been preferred for the manufacture of sugar, is conical, of a 
rose color without, and its concentric external layers are also color- 
ed ; but it appears that the white beet of Silesia is the moie pro- 
ductive. The beet thrives in almost all kinds of soil, provided only 
they be sufiiciently manured. In Alsace it succeeds in light, and in 
strong argillaceous soils indifferently. Another precious quality which 
this root possesses is that of succeeding in the most dissimilar cli- 
mates ; it is grown to purpose both in the north and in the south of 
France. 

The beet is sown at once in the field, or in a bed and transplanted ; 
the latter method appears now to obtain a decided preference, inasmuch 
as it leaves plenty of time for the preparation of the soil, and espe- 
cially for accumulating and carrying out manure. 

In a piece of ground well broken up by delving or ploughing, and 
highly manured, which need not be of greater extent than fgth of 
the entire surface to be planted, the seed is sown in lines or drills 
as soon as the spring frosts are no longer to be apprehended. The 
transplanting in the east of France takes place about the middle of 
May, and even in the beginning of June. The plants are generally 
set about 15 inches apart. In the north the beet harvest does not 
begin before the end of September, and generally ends in the course 
of the month of October. The gathering is delayed as long as 
possible, inasmuch as the roots increase visibly to the very end of 
the season. But gathering the beet at a very late period in those 
countries where the winter seed has to follow this crop, is attended 
with more than one disadvantage. Without speaking of the difficul- 
ties that are incidental to wet seasons, a late seed-time is generally 
unfavorable for wheat. To meet this difficulty, I have been accus- 
tomed for some time to take up my crop of beet at the period when 
it became necessary to prepare the land for winter seed, that is to 
say, more than a month before the general harvest of the -root. In 
doing so I relied upon the interesting fact ascertained by M. Peligot 
in the course of his chemical inquiries, viz : that the composition of 
the beet is identical at every age. In this premature or anticipated 
beet harvest, a less weight of root is of course gathered than would 
have been obtained at a later period ; but the nutritious powers of 



REF.T AND KF.ET-SUflAR. 123 

these beet roots are tlie same as they would ever have been. The 
grand questions to be determined were, whether the roots would 
keep or not, and whether the cattle would eat them from the pile as 
freely as from the field. All this was ascertained in the course of 
the winter : the beet kept perfectly, the cattle ate it as freely as ever. 
The procedure to be adopted therefore to secure a crop of beet of 
average weight, storing nevertheless some considerable time before 
the usual period, is simply to transplant somewhat more closely, and 
to put less space between the drills. If experience decides in favor 
of this method, the sole inconvenience which attends the cultivation 
of the beet in a freshly inanured soil, and as the first crop in the 
rotation, that, namely, of causing a late and unfavorable seed-time for 
winter corn, will be completely got over. 

The beet which grows above the ground is best gathered with the 
hand ; kinds that grow under ground require to be loosened by run- 
ning a plough along the drill, &c. In Alsace it is the custom to take 
away the leaves, and to trim the roots upon the ground ; the refuse 
thus obtained constitutes a considerable mass of manure, which it is 
well to plough in immediately. 

To extract the sugar of the beet the plant is washed and rasped, 
and the pulp is then subjected totlie action of a powerful press. 
Like the juice of the cane, the juice of the beet speedily undergoes 
a change ; it is therefore immediately heated to 70° cent, or ISBTahr., 
and a little lime is mixed with it to neutralize acid and favor the clarifi- 
cation, by combining with albumen. The liquor is skimmed, and in the 
course of an hour becomes quite lirnpid, and of a pale yellow color. 
The li(iuor is then run upon a filter containing animal charcoal, and 
from that is transferred to a boiler where it is properly reduced, the 
process being in all respects the same as in the manufacture of cane 
sugar. 

In France, the produce of each 110 lbs. weight of beet is estimated 
at 4.50, or somewhat more than 4^ lbs. of white sugar. The amount 
of loss in the manufacture may be conceived from the actual compo- 
sition of the beet, which, by the process followed by M. Peligot,* 
and which consists essentially in drying a certain weight of the root, 
cut into thin slices, and then exhausting the matter with boiling 
alcohol of moderate density, appears to contain from 4 or 5, up to 9, 
10, 11, and even nearly 12 per cent, of sugar. This analysis of M. 
Peligot has been confirmed by the experiments of M. Braconnot,f 
who found the white beet of Silesia to have a very complex compo- 
sition, comprising as many as twenty-one different ingredients, among 
the number crystallizable sugar, albumen, woody matter, phos- 
phate of magnesia, phosphate of lime, oxalate of potash, and oxalate 
of lime, oxide of iron, an ammoniacal salt' in small quantity, &c. 
On an average, the analysis of M. Peligot would lead us to conclude 
that the beet contained in one hundred parts — 

* Recherches siir I'jinnlysc de la betterave a sucre. 
t Annales de Chimie, vol. Ixxii. p. 442, 2d. series^ 



124 BEET AND BEET-SUGAR. 



Water 87 

Matter soluble in water (sugar) 8 

Insoluble substances, (woody tissue) . • • • • 5 

100 

from which it appears that no more than about fths of the sugar 
contained in the beet-root is extracted. As in crushing the cane, so 
in squeezing the rasped pulp of the beet, a part of the loss is owing 
lo a certain quantity of sugar being left in the expressed pulp. In 
fact, with the presses generally in use, while from 60 to 70 per cent, 
of juice is obtained, the root actually contains 95 per cent. The 
loss here, however, is of less consequence than it is in the cane, the 
trash of which is used for fuel, while the pulp of the beet serves as 
food for cattle. The pulp, indeed, is found to possess very nearly 
the same amount of nutritive power as the root which produced it. 

One of the considerations which is perhaps of highest importance 
in connection with the production of sugar from the beet, is inherent 
in the difficulty of preserving the root after it is full-grown. Gather- 
ed at the end of autumn the root suffers no less from severe frost, 
than it does from mild open weather : frost destroys its organiza- 
tion, and in mild winters vegetation continues at the expense of the 
sugary principle, which had been formed during the growth. If the 
beet actually contains at every period of its existence the same 
quantity of sugar with reference to its weight, there would probably 
be a great advantage in not waiting for the period of complete ma- 
turity, by sowing somewhat thicker than wont ; any diiference of 
weight would probably be made up, and then there would be no risk 
of loss from keeping. 

The quantity of beet gathered from a given extent of land neces- 
sarily varies with the soil, the pains bestowed upon the crop, and 
the quantity of manure that has been used ; the following are a few 
particulars from official documents : 

PRODUCE PER ACRE. 
Ton. Owt. a™. Lb». 

PasdeCidais 12 9 1 19 

Department of the North 12 10 2 25 

Department of Cher 15 1 39 

but in other departments the produce is considerably smaller, so that 
the average for the whole country has been estimated at not more 
that 10 tons 9 cwt. 1 qr. 13 lbs. per acre; an average which ap- 
proaches very closely to that which I have obtained from my own 
farm at Bechelbronn, calculated during a period of seven years. 

Assuming 4/jjths lbs. of sugar to be obtained from every 110 lbs. 
of beet, the produce in sugar from an English acre in the course of 
seven months will amount in the present state of things to 9 cwt. 2 
qrs. and 7 lbs. By way of comparison I shall here remind the 
reader that an English acre of land laid out in Otaheite sugar-cane 
yields in the course of about fourteen months, 15 cwt. 1 qr. 10 lbs. 
I find from my accounts for 1841, that to manage an English acre 
of land under beet-root in Alsace, 45.6 days of a man, and 14.1 



BEET AND BEET-SUGAR. 125 

days of a horse was the amount of labor expended. In a document 
upon the sugar plantations of Guadaloupe which I have seen, it is 
stated that a domain of 150 hectares, or 370 acres, is worked by 150 
negroes, which, reckoning the time that the crop is on the ground 
at fourteen months, would bring the number of days labor by a man, 
to 171.8 per English acre. Such an expenditure of labor must in 
the nature of things absorb the greater part of the profits ; and, 
indeed, in a commission of inquiry into the laws connected with the 
sugar trade, it was shown in reference to the plantation in ques- 
tion, that the cost of cultivation and manufacture was equal to the 
value of the produce. Still the cane presents one considerable 
advantage over the beet, that, namely, of furnishing the fuel 
necessary to the boiling, an advantage which will be better under- 
stood, when it is known that in the manufacture of every 110 lbs. 
weight of beet sugar, the consumption of coal amounts to 22 lbs. 

In countries where sugar is cheap, it becomes an ordinary article 
of diet; in the public mai'ket-places of the great towns of South 
America, one of the rations commonly exposed for sale consists of 
brown sugar and cheese. M. Codazzi estimates the quantity of 
sugar consumed by each inhabitant of Venezuela at 110 lbs. In 
England it amounts to about 22 lbs. ; in Ireland, to no more than 
4 lbs. and -f^ths ; in Holland it is 15/g lbs. ; in France it is 8— lbs. ; 
in Italy, 2^ lbs. ; and in Russia, but ly"*,;^ lb. per head. 

Maple sugar. {Acei- saccharinum.) The maple is very common 
in the east of the United States of America. The tree is occa- 
sionally met with in clumps of several acres in extent, but it is 
more commonly found dispersed in the forest, growing among pines, 
poplars, ashes, &c. The tree grows particularly in rich soils, and 
attains the height of the oak ; the trunk being often more than three 
feet in diameter. The maple becomes covered with flowers in the 
spring before the appearance of the leaves. It is supposed to be in 
its prime at the age of about twenty years. The sap of the maple 
is obtained by piercing the trunk to the depth of from six to ten 
inches. A piece of wood to serve as a gutter is placed in the hole, 
and the sap is received in a vessel placed underneath. It is usual 
to pierce the tree first on the side that is towards the south ; when 
the flow of sap begins to lessen, it is tapped upon the north side. 
The best season for making maple sugar is the beginning of spring, 
February, March, and April ; the sap continues to flow during five 
or six weeks. The quantity of sap obtained is found to be largest 
when the days are hot and the nights cold ; the quantity collected 
in the course of twenty-four hours will vary from about half a pint 
to thirty pints and more ; the temperature of the air has the most 
marked influence upon the flow of the sap ; it ceases completely, 
for instance, in those nights when it freezes after a very hot day. 

The maple does not appear to snffer from reiterated perforation ; 
trees are mentioned which were still flourishing after having yielded 
sugar for forty-two consecutive years. In certain cases, which, 
however, must be held as exceptions to the rule, as many as 183 
pints of sap have been tapped from a maple in the course of twenty- 

11* 



126 PALM-SUGAR. 

four hours, which j'ieltleJ 4^^ lbs. of crystallized sugar. A maple 
of ordinary dimensions, in a good year, will yield, on an average, 
about 198 pints of sap, producing 5^ lbs. of sugar. The sap of the 
maple must therefore contain about 2.2 per jcent. of its weight of 
marketable sugar. It has been found, that with care and attention 
the maple becomes more productive ; maples around which other 
forest trees have been felled, or which have been transplanted into 
gardens, yield a sap which is not only more abundant, but also 
richer in sugar, which, in fact, contains about three per cent, of 
sugar. 

The manufacture of maple sugar presents no peculiarity ; pre- 
cisely the same process is followed as in the case of the cane and 
beet. Unless very speedily boiled down, the sap ferments, and 
undergoes change ; in some parts of the United States, indeed, a 
vinous liquor is made of the sap, by allowing it to run into sponta- 
neous fermentation. 

PALM SUGAR. 

The palm which in the southern parts of India furnishes crystal- 
lized sugar in large quantity, is the cleophora of Gaertner, and 
reaches a height of about 100 feet. Its fruit hangs in clusters up- 
wards of a yard in length. The natives procure the sap by cutting 
short one of the shoots that is about to flower and carry fruit, and 
hanging under the cut part of a calabash or other vessel, into which 
the fluid distils ; in a large plantation such an apparatus is seen 
connected with each palm-tree ; the sap is removed every morning, 
and it is enough to reduce it by evaporation to obtain the sugar, 
which differs in no respect from the finest sugar of the cane ; in the 
unrefined state it is known over the whole of the East under the 
name of jaggery,* and is then a kind of moist and sticky muscovado 
sugar. The sap of the palm-tree obtained in the way above indica- 
ted, is often turned into a vinous liquor, which is much prized in 
many places. The pith of the tree yields sago. The palm-trees 
cultivated in India consequently yield three most useful products — 
sugar, oil, and the farinaceous article of diet called sago. In rear- 
ing the cocoa-nut palm, those nuts are selected for seed which fall 
naturally, and they are dried in their husk. The ground which is 
to be sown is dug to a depth of eighteen or twenty inches, and it is 
left to settle for three or four days. Some portion of the surface is 
then taken away, and the fresh soil is covered, to the depth of about 
six inches, with sand. The nuts are then placed upon the ground 
so prepared, and covered over with a little sand and a light stratum 
of vegetable mould ; they are then watered for three days consecu- 
tively. In the course of three months the young palms are fit to be 
transplanted, and thoy are set at the distance of about twenty feet 
every way from one another. For their reception in the permanent 

* This is the generic ntime for '■ugar, and is olivionsly either the Latin word sac- 
charum, or from the same root as the Latin word. The cocoa-nut tree treated in the 
same way as the cleophor i yields abund;incc of sugar, wliich is also known under the 
name of jaggery. — Eno. Ed. 



GRAPE-SUGAR. OK GLUCOSE. 127 

plantation, holes are dug of about two feet in depth, in which a 
layer of sand, about six inches in depth, is put, upon which the young 
plants, still adhering to the fruit, are placed ; the hole is then filled 
with sand, and the surface is covered with a little earth. The young 
trees require watering every day during about three years. The 
palm begins to be productive at the age of seven or eight years, and 
it continues to yield fruit, or sap for the manufacture of sugar, during 
a very considerable period, without causing any further cost for cul- 
tivation.* The sap of the greater number of the palms appears to 
be rich in saccharine matter ; it is obvious, indeed, that every sap 
that is capable of supplying a vinous liquor by fermentation, may 
also furnish sugar; and if the palms have not generally been grown 
with a view to this product, it is because the fruit must then be 
given up, and, both in India and South America, the produce in the 
shape of oil from the nuts of the palm, is almost always more valu- 
able than that which can be had in the shape of sugar. f 

GRAPE SUGAR. 

We have already said that starch acted upon by acids, and by 
malted barley, is changed into a saccharine fermentable substance, 
■which, both in regard to flavor and physical properties, differs in 
many respects from the sugar which we have hitherto been engaged 
in studying. As this substance exists naturally in the grape, it has 
been called grape sugar, a name for which the generic term glucose 
has been lately substituted in France, this term being used to include 
all the sugars that are analogous to grape sugar. Grape sugar oc- 
curs in- the form of small white and very soft crystals, grouped in 
tubercular masses; it softens at 60°, (140° Fahr.,) and becomes 
quite sirupy at 90°, (194° Fahr.) Alcohol free from water dissolves 
none of it ; but diluted alcohol takes up a considerable quantity. 

In the grape this sugar is associated with cream of tartar, tartrate 
of lime, and several other saline matters. It is easily extracted 
from the fruit ; but the grape sugar of commerce is now universally 
prepared from starch ; large quantities, indeed, are manufactured on 
the continent for the preparation of spirit, and for the amelioration 
of wine, beer, cider, &c., in short, to supply sugar wherever it is 
defective in the natural or artificial musts that are subjected to fer- 
mentation. In England considerable quantities are also manufac- 
tured ; but here the law does not allow it to be used in the same ad- 
vantageous direction as in France and Germany ; all that is made is 
employed for mixing with adulterating cane sugar, which is an arti- 
cle of higher price. 

The sugar that is made from starch, and that is obtained from the 
grape are identical in composition, as is that also which is found in 
the urine, of persons laboring under diabetes. 

* Buchanan. A Journey from Madras, &c., vol. i. p. 155. 

t In British India the cocoa-nut palm is beginning to be extensively cultivated as a 
means of producing sugar. A considerable portion of the East India sugar now brought 
to market, is manufactured from the palm-tree. It is not improbable, indeed, that the 
palm of one species or another will one day supersede the sugar-cane and the bcetas 
the source of ail the sugar consumed in Europe. — Eng. Ed. 



128 MANNA. 

Grape Sugar Sugar of Starch. Diabetic Sugar 

(Saussure.) (Gueriu.) (Peligot.J 

Carbon 36.7 36.1 36.4 

Hydrogen 6.8 7.0 7.0 

Oxygen .56.5 56.9 56.6 

100.0 100.0 100.0 

Like cane sugar, grape sugar in combining with certain bases 
abandons a portion of its constitutional water. In the state in which 
it is combined with the oxide of lead it contains — 

Carbon 43.3 

Hydrogen 6.3 

Oxygen 50.4 

100.0 

From these analyses it appears that crystallized grape sugar con- 
sists of — 

Anhydrous glucose 100 

Water 19 

On comparing the two kinds of sugar in the crystallized state, it 
becomes evident that glucose or grape sugar does not differ from 
cane sugar, except in containing a larger quantity of water. In fact 
the composition of grape sugar may be represented in this way : 



Carbon 42.21 

Hydrogen 6.2> 100 of cane sugar. 

Oxygen 51.6 ) 

115.8 of grape sugar. 



The cane, the beet, the palm, the maple, the vine, and starch, 
turned into glucose, are the sources from whence all the sugar of 
commerce is obtained at the present day, although attempts more or 
less successful have also been made to extract sugar from the pine- 
apple, from the chestnut, from the sweet orange, and from the stem 
of the maize or Indian corn. It appears that before the conquest 
the Mexicans prepared a sirup from the stem of the Indian corn, 
which was sold in the market-places. Pallas could not obtain more 
than about 3 per cent, of crystallized sugar from maize, but in an 
experiment which I made in South America along with M. Roulin, 
the quantity of raw sugar obtained from this plant was 6 per cent. 

SACCHARINE PRINCIPLES NOT FERMENTABLE. 

Manna ; mannite. This saccharine principle is met with in dif- 
ferent plants ; it has been found in the expressed juice of onions, 
and in that of asparagus, in the alburnum of several species of pine- 
trees, and in different mushrooms. Manna, which is an exudation 
from i\\e fraxinus ornus and larch, contains nearly fths of its weight 
of mannite, and it is therefore from this substance that mannite is 
usually obtained, although it can also be bad from the juice of the 
beet and the onion ; but then it is necessary to destroy the cane or 
grape sugar which they contain by previous vinous fermentation, 



PECTIN E. 129 

and M. Pelouze has even maintained that the mannite thus prepared 
is a product of fermentation.* 

Mannite crystallizes in very white semi-transparent needles ; it 
has a slightly sweet taste, and is soluble in water. According to 
Tiiebig and Opperman it contains : 

Carbon 39.6 

Hydrogen 7.7 

O.tygen 52.7 

100.0 

Liquorice. This substance, which is obtained from the root of 
the Gbjcirrhiza glabra, is too well known to require particular con- 
sideration ; it is soluble both in water and in alcohol. 

GUM. 

Gum is a substance very extensively diffused in the vegetable 
kingdom ; there is, perhaps, no plant which does not contain some. 
Gum is divided into two kinds ; gum, properly so called, the type 
of which we have in gum-arabic, and vegetable mucilage, such as 
we meet in gum-tragacanth. 

Gum in dissolving in water produces a thick and adhesive fluid. 
It is insoluble in alcohol. Some plants contain such a quantity that 
upon infusion they seem to give, as it were, nothing else : such are 
the althea, the malva officinalis, &c. 

Gum does not crystallize, it is met with in concrete masses which 
result from the solidification of the drops which flow spontaneously 
from the trees that yield it : by long boiling with dilute sulphuric 
acid it is changed into glucose. Nitric acid alters it, and several 
new products are the result, among the number of which is mucic 
acid. Gum-arabic, according to the analysis of M. Gay-Lussac and 
Thenard, consists of : 

Carbon 42.3 

Hydrogen 6.9 

Osygen • 50.8 

100.0 

To obtain vegetable mucilage, a quantity of linseed is treated with 
water and expressed. It is also obtained by steeping gum traga- 
canth in about 1000 parts of water and pouring off the solution which 
covers the mucilaginous mass. The mucilage then forms a jelly 
more or less consistent, which diluted with a large quantity of water 
forms a ropy viscid fluid. Dried again, this mucilage becomes hard 
and translucid ; in water it regains its former state. f 

VEGETABLE JELLY PECTINE AND PECTIC ACID. 

It is well known that the juice of all fruits contains a gelatinous 
substance to which many of them owe the property of forming jellies. 

* Annales de Chiniic, vol. .\lvii. p. 419, 2d pcries. — The refuse wash of the distiller, 
appreciated by the taste, appears to contain a considerable quantity of saccharine 
matter, which is probably mannite. — Eng. Ed. 

t Berzelius, Chenii.try, vol. v. 



130 PECTINE, PECTIC ACID. 

This matter may be obtained by means of alcohol. If into a quantity 
of currant juice lately expressed, a portion of alcohol be poured, a 
gelatinous precipitate is formed after a certain time ; this jelly, sub- 
jected to graduated pressure and washed with diluted alcohol, gives 
the gelatinous principle in a state of tolerable purity : this is pectine, 
discovered by M. Braconnot. 

Pectine dried is in membranous semi-transparent pieces resem- 
bling isinglass. Thrown into about one hundred times its weight of 
water it swells considerably and at length dissolves completely, 
giving rise to a stiff jelly. By increasing the quantity of water, a 
mucilaginous solution, having a slightly milky aspect, is obtained. 

Pure pectine is quite insipid ; it does not affect the color of litmus, 
the weaker acids have no effect upon it ; a slight excess of potash or 
of soda does not change it obviously, and nevertheless pectine is 
singularly modified under the influence of these alkalies, being chang- 
ed into a particular body, having acid reaction ; for on saturating 
the alkali employed, it immediately coagulates into a transparent 
gelatinous mass — pectic acid. As pectine acted upon by the fixed 
alkalies undergoes so remarkable a change, we may be allowed to 
conclude, with M. Braconnot, that the pectic acid which is found 
ready formed in plants, has a similar origin ; a view moreover which 
tends to confirm that formerly announced by Vauquelin, when he 
ascribed the development of the acids of vegetables to the presence 
of alkalies.* 

Gelatinous pectic acid immediately becomes defluent upon the 
addition of a few drops of solution of ammonia. By evaporating 
this solution in a porcel.iin dish we olitain an acid pectate of am- 
monia, which swells in distilled water, dissolves in it, and thickens 
a large quantity of the fluid. As ammonia has no reaction upon 
pectine, M. Braconnot has taken advantage of this negative property 
to determine if pectic acid exists or not, ready formed, in certain 
jilants. Thus in treating carrots with cold water, rendered slightly 
iinimoniacal, a liquid is obtained, from which an acid immediately 
throws down a precipitate of pectic acid.f Pectine and pectic acid, 
tlierefore, may exist together in vegetables, and M. Jacquelain has 
proved that the acid there is often in a state of combination as an 
alkiiline or earthy pectate. Tt is to these pectates that M. Payen 
ascribes the origin of the carbonates of the same bases, which are 
met with in the aslies of plants", the organic acid having of course 
benn destroyed by the combustion. f 

M. Braconnot has described an easy process for obtaining pectic 
acid in large quantity from carrots. »^ 

M. Fremy has published analyses of pectine and pectic acid, which 
present this remarkable peculiarity, that the one has exactly the 
same elementary composition as the other. 

* Braconnot, Annals of Ctiomistry, vol. .xlvii. p. 274, 2(1 series 
t Braconnot, op. cit. vol. xxx. p. 99. 

i Payen, Proceedings of the .■Vcudemy of Sciences, vol. xv. p. 907 
^ Op. cit. vol. xxx. p. 97. 



VEGETABLE ACIDS. 131 

Pecline. 

Carbon 42.9 

Hydrogen 5.1 

Oxygen 52.0 

100.0 

I have thought it right to speak at some length of these two prin- 
ciples, as they appear to play an important part in the phenomena of 
vegetable life. A careful study of pectine and pectic acid will very 
probably aid in throwing light upon the metamorphoses which organic 
substances undergo in the act of vegetation. Pectic acid has been 
found in every plant in which it has been sought for ; M. Braconnot 
discovered it in the turnip, carrot, beet, peony, in all bulbs, in the 
stalks and leaves of herbaceous plants, in the wood and bark of all the 
trees examined, in all kinds of fruit, apples, pears, plums, cucumbers, 
&c. M. Braconnot is even very much inclined to think that pectic 
acid may constitute the essential principle in the cambium or organ- 
izable matter of Grew and Duhamel.* 

OF VEGETABLE ACIDS. 

In the series of bodies which we have now considered, one only, 
sugar, possesses the property of crystallizing. All the others are 
amorphous, and their globular disposition and gelatinous qualities 
have led to the presumption that they form in some sort the line of 
demarcation between things without and things endowed with life. 
It was also imagined that these amorphous matters, that these pro- 
ducts of the vegetable organization, almost organized themselves, 
would alone suffice for the nourishment of animals. This idea, 
however, is not well founded ; for if it be true that albumen, caseine, 
legumine, starch, and gum, are powerful elements of nutrition, it is 
equally so that sugar may perform an important part in this process, 
by acting in the same manner as starch, the oils, and other principles 
of ternary composition, in becoming like them a useful, often an in- 
dispensable auxiliary, of azotized alimentary matters. 

This disposition to consider the amorphous state of the more im- 
portant immediate principles of vegetables as a special and distinctive 
character, cannot be maintained beside the recent observations of 
Milscherlich. This illustrious chemist has found, that if the mineral 
precipitates which are deposited in liquids, are in many cases form- 
ed of crystals more or less regular, they are also sometimes compos- 
ed of small spheres or aggregated masses, the particles of which do 
not unite in a regular way as crystals, but remain separated by a 
thin layer of fluid. Examined under the microscope these masses 
present themselves under the form of flocks and of shreds, having a 
granular or gelatinous appearance, and which remain soft and flexi- 
ble like fresh vegetable or animal sub.stauces, so long as they are 
kept under water ; it is only in drying that they become pulverulent 
or acquire the vitreous aspect.f 

* Braconnot, op. cit. vol. x.vviii. p. 171. 
t Berzeliu.s, Ann. Keport, 1841, p. 20. 



132 VEGETABLE ACIUS. 

The substances, the chemical constitution of which we have still 
to examine, may in general be obtained in the crystallized state ; 
their individuality seems more decided ; they are more stable, better 
characterized, and their specific properties often assimilate them to 
inorganic bodies. Such, for example, are the acids formed in the 
course of vegetable existence. 

Vegetable acids present all the general characters of mineral 
acids, while they participate in the properties inherent in organic 
substances. Thus they form salts by uniting with bases ; with 
potash, soda, ammonia, they form salts soluble in water ; the other 
bases produce compounds that are soluble or insoluble, according to 
the nature of the acid. These acids, free or uncombined, are very 
frequently met with in fruit, sometimes in the leaves, more rarely 
in the seeds and roots ; but in combination with bases they are met 
with in almost all parts of plants. Already very numerous, they are 
increasing rapidly with the progress of discovery ; with the excep- 
tion of a very few employed in the arts, their study forms a subject 
of no great interest. I shall therefore confine myself to a few of the 
most extensively distributed of these acids. 

Oxalic acid. This acid exists free in the hairs of the cicer or 
chick-pea, and united with potash constituting an acid salt, the bin- 
oxolate of potash in the wood sorrel and the common or garden sor- 
rel. It is from the former of these plants that the salt called salt 
of lemons, but which is, in fact, the binoxolate of potash, is still ex- 
tracted in some countries. The juice of the wood sorrel is expressed 
and yields about 0.003 of its weight of the salt, from which, by or- 
dinary chemical manipulation, the oxalic acid is readily obtained. 
At the present time this acid is prepared artificially by the action of 
nitric acid upon starch ; it is a powerful acid, and its affinity for lime 
is such that it takes this base even from its union with sulphuric 
acid. 

Tartaric acid is met with above all in the grape in the state of 
bitartrate of potash, a salt which is deposited upon the sides of the 
casks in which the wine is kept. After having been properly puri- 
fied, it is known in commerce under the name of cream of tartar, 
from which the tartaric acid can readily be obtained. Another par- 
ticular acid, the racemic acid, the composition of which is identical 
with that of the tartaric acid, has been discovered in the tartar of 
the wines grown on the Upper Rhine. 

Citric acid. This acid is found in the juice of many plants, and 
abundantly in the juice of lemons, oranges, currants, &c. It is from 
the lemon and the lime that the citric acid employed in the arts is 
generally obtained. 

Tannic acid. A certain substance which is met with in the bark 
of particular trees, and which has the valuable property of rendering 
the hides of animals with which it is combined insusceptible of pu- 
trefaction, is familiarly known under the name of tannin. The art 
of the tanner is founded upon this property of tannin. A solution 
of gelatine being poured into an infusion of tannic acid, an insoluble 
precipitate, formed by the union of the acid with the animal matter, 



VEGETABLE ALKALIES. 



133 



IS immediately produced. By macerating a piece of raw hide in a 
solution of tannin, the same combination takes place even into the 
very interior of the tissue ; the whole of the tannin quits the solu- 
tion by degrees to combine with the gelatine of the skin. 

It is not in the bark only that tannin is encountered, it has been 
found in different organs of plants. Sir Humphrey Davy has stated 
these quantities of tannin as constituents of 100 parts of the follow- 
ing substances : 



Nutgalls . 
Oak bark 




27.4 
6.3 


Chestnut bark 




4.3 


Elm bark 


, 


2.7 


Willow bark . 




2.2 


Inner white bark of 


an aged oak 


15.0 


The same of young 


oaks 


16.0 


The same of the Ind 


ian chestnut 


15.2 


The inner colored bark of the oak 


4.0 


Sicilian sumac 




16.2 


Malaga sumac 
Souchong tea 




10.4 
10.0 


Green tea 




8.5 


Bombay catechu 
Bengal catechu 




54.3 

48.1 



Gallic acid. This acid is found united with tannin in the greater 
number of barks, or along with the astringent principles of plants. 
Gallic acid appears to be the product of a kind of fermentation un- 
dergone by tannin, as the process by which it is prepared seems to 
indicate, and which consists essentially in exposing for about a 
month a quantity of nutgalls reduced to powder and kept constantly 
moistened. The solution of gallic acid does not precipitate gela- 
tine. 

I have added in a table the composition of the principal vegetable 
acids. I shall speak of the composition of fat acids when I come to 
treat of fatty sub.stances. 

The different vegetable acids do not vary essentially in composi- 
tion, save in a single instance. With one exception they consist of 
definite proportions of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The excep- 
tion alluded to is the hydrocyanic acid, which contains no oxygen, 
but a large quantity, nearly 52 per cent., of azote. 

OF THE VEGETABLE ALKALIES. 

The alkaline bases which are formed in the course of vegetation. 
always contain a certain proportion of azote. Their general prop- 
erties are those of alkalies ; their watery or alcoholic solutions re- 
store the blue color of the reddenea tincture of turnsole, and they 
constitute salts by combining with acids. In their manner of be- 
having they bear a certain analogy to ammonia. Like ammonia, 
the organic alkalies combine with the hydrates of the oxacids, and 
when they are deprived of their water of crystallization, they fix the 
hydracids without losing weight. 

12 



134 FATTY SUBSTANCES. 

The discovery of the vegetable bases is due to Sertuerner, who, 
in 1804, indicated the existence of morphine in opium. The ma- 
jority of the vegetable alkalies are insoluble, or little soluble in 
water ; all are soluble in alcohol ; some of them are sufficiently 
volatile to be susceptible of distillation. 

In elementary composition they are all very much alike, consist- 
ing of various, but, in each instance, definite proportions of carbon, 
hydrogen, oxygen, and azote, the carbon varying from about 50 to 
75, the hydrogen from 6 to 12, the oxygen from 8 or 9 to 27 and 
even 37, and the azote from 1.6 to 12, 28, and even 35 per cent. 

OF FATTY SUBSTANCES. 

Under this title I comprise all the oily substances, liquid or solid, 
and those that are analogous to wax, which are found disseminated 
in different organs of plants. A character common to almost all 
fatty substances, is insolubility in water. They dissolve in sensible 
quantity in alcohol, and especially in ether. Fatty substances may 
be divided into two classes : one including those which are easily 
modified by the action of alkalies, and which form soaps ; the other 
not susceptible of this action, not susceptible of saponification, or, at 
all events, that are only attacked by alkalies in very particular cir- 
cumstances. 

When a mixture of fat oil and a solution of caustic alkali are 
heated, the oil is soon observed to incorporate with the alkaline 
liquid. After boiling for some time, if the alkali is in excess, clots 
or flocks appear, and in removing the excess of liquid a white mass 
is obtained which is soluble in water — the oil is saponified ; and the 
product of the saponification is combined with a portion of the alkali 
which has been employed. If into a hot solution of this soap a 
quantity of hydrochloric acid be poured, the acid seizes upon the pot- 
ash or the soda, setting at liberty the fatty body which had been 
combined with the alkali, and which collects on the liquid. It is 
easy to discover that the fatty matter thus collected is no longer the 
same as that which had been originally employed ; for example, it is 
completely soluble in boiling alcohol, which, on cooling, de^posites 
brilliant pearly crystals of a fatty substance possessing acid proper- 
ties. By evaporating the alcohol from which these crystals are 
formed, an additional quantity is obtained, and, when the alcohol is 
entirely dissipated, another unctuous body is obtained, having also 
acid properties. Three acids having distinguishing characters are, 
in fact, obtained by the action of alkalies upon fatty substances : the 
stearic, margaric, and oleic acids. The alkalies consequently trans- 
form neutral oily bodies into acid substances, as first shown by the 
admirable researches of M. Chevreul, before whose time it was al- 
ways assumed that soap was the result of a direct union of fatty 
matters with alkalies. The fatty acids are not the only products of 
saponification, there are several others, particularly glycerine, which, 
however, need not occupy us particularly here. 

The experiments of M. Chevreul would lead us to view all fatty 



FATTY SUBSTANCES. 135 

matters as combinations of glycerine playing the part of a base with 
particular acids ; these combinations, analogous to salts if their con- 
stitution be merely considered, are generally mixed together in oils 
and fats ; thus the union of stearic acid and glycerine forms stearine, 
which is fusible at the temperature of about 62° cent. (144° Fahr.) 
Stearic acid melts at 72° cent., (162" Fahr.,) oleine remains fluid at 
4° cent., (24° Fahr.,) and oleic acid is liquid. An oil is, therefore, 
by so much the more consistent as a larger quantity of solid fatty 
acid enters into its composition, and it is, on the contrary, by so 
much the softer and more liquid as this acid is itself more fluid. Tiie 
wax of the Myrica cerifera, for example, is sufficiently hard to be 
reduced to powder, and is almost entirely formed of stearine. In 
the fluid vegetable oils oleine always predominates. It is easy lo 
separate these difl'erent fatty compounds from one another. 

Besides the solid and liquid acids which are obtained from fatty 
substances, there are others known which are volatile. 

Fatty bodies absorb oxygen from the air. This absorption is at 
first extremely slow, scarcely appreciable ; but once begun, it goes 
on with great rapidity ; so rapidly, indeed, that if a large surface be 
exposed to the air, if, for example, a quantity of rags or tow be im- 
pregnated with oil, the mass may take fire. The consequence of 
this oxidation is always a thickening of oil, and there are some which 
become completely solid in its course ; these are designated by the 
title of drying oils, and are in particular request for the manufacture 
of varnishes. Nut oil which has remained long exposed to the air 
acquires the consistence of jelly, and its unctuous properties have so 
entirely disappeared that it no longer stains paper. 

The alteration which fatty substances undergo in contact with air 
and moisture is still more remarkable. The oils which are inodorous 
and without taste soon acquire under these circumstances a strong 
smell and a disagreeable flavor. Fleshy fruits which contain a large 
quantity of oil, such as the olive and the oleaginous seeds, when 
moistened suffer true fermentation, the result of which is the sepa- 
ration of the fatty acids from the glycerine. 

Oils subjected to the action of a high temperature are also greatly 
modified. The glycerine which they contain is decomposed, and 
gives rise to various pyrogenous products : stearic acid is changed 
into margaric acid, and oleic acid into sebacic acid, a crystallizable 
volatile acid which is soluble in hot water. 

The fatty substances of plants are principally accumulated in the 
fruit, and particularly in the seed. In the herbaceous parts they are 
less abundant, less perfectly elaborated. Oils appear to be included 
in the vegetable tissue under the form of globules, or minute drops. 
In such an oily seed as the common almond, when it is growing, we 
perceive that the cellular tissue is in the first instance full of a col- 
orless and transparent fluid ; but as the seed advances, each cell is 
seen to become filled with numbers of little oil globules which in- 
crease continually in size and number until the kernel is ripe ; there 
is at the same time a quantity of azotized matter deposited in the 
midst of the liquid, which disturbs its transparency ; it is this depos- 



136 FATTY SUBSTANCES. 

ite which thickens the walls of the cells.* The capillary force 
which retains fatty principles combined with the tissue of certain 
seeds must be very considerable, for having boiled some rape-seed, 
which contained 50 per cent, of oil, in water, there was not a trace 
of oily matter perceptible upon the surface of the liquid. Butter 
appears to be kept diffused in milk by something of a similar force, 
for milk when boiled yields but a very small quantity of this sub- 
stance. M. Dumas and I maintain that the oil of seeds is intended 
for the production of heat by undergoing combustion at the period 
of germination ; a series of experiments performed in my laboratory 
by M. Letellier supports this opinion. 

Having ascertained by a preliminary trial the quantity of oily 
substance contained in a certain weight of seed, some of the same 
kind was put to germinate, and the quantity of oil which it contained 
was tested at two periods of the germination ; it was found that in 
the course of this process a considerable proportion of the fatty sub- 
stance had disappeared ; one gramme or 15.438 grains of rape-seed 
before germination contained 0.50 of oil ; after the first period of 
germination, namely, when the cotyledons had begun to turn green, 
the quantity of oil was found reduced to 0.43, and at the end of the 
second period, when the cotyledons had become quite green and the 
radicles were from 3.9 to 4.6 inches long, the oil was reduced to 0.28. 

It would be extremely interesting to ascertain the extreme loss 
which the oily principles of seeds sustained in the course of the 
commencement of vegetation, and to follow the return of the same 
principles in proportion as the plant advanced towards maturity. 
M. Letellier is going on with these experiments. 

The numberless uses to which oil is put, make its manufacture an 
object of the highest importance. Vegetable oils are generally ob- 
tained from olives, from oleaginous seeds, and from the nut of cer- 
tain palms. Oil is separated by pressure ; it may often be extracted 
from the seed in the natural state, in which case the produce is of 
fine quality, but seldom abundant. The castor-oil bean, for example, 
yields its oil under the simple action of the press. In America, 
however, to obtain this oil, the seeds are first roasted slightly, and 
being bruised they are then boiled in water ; the oil readily sepa- 
rates from the roasted seed. A similar process is sometimes follow- 
ed in procuring cacao butter. 

In the extraction of oil from the common oleaginous seeds, they 
are first ground or bruised in a proper apparatus ; the paste or pow- 
der which they now form is generally heated, and being put into 
woollen sacks, and these enclosed in hair bags, they are subjected to 
the operation of the press ; after one pressure, the magma which 
remains in the bags is crushed anew, heated, and pressed again. 
The oil obtained by the second pressing is never so pure as that 
procured by the first. 

The oil-cake is taken out of the bags, completely dry in appear- 
auice, but it still contains a large proportion of oil — from 8 to 15 per 

* Dumas, Chemistry, vol. v. 



OIL. 



137 



cent, of its weight. It is used in fattening cattle and as manure- 
Oil, when newly expressed, is always turbid and very mucilaginous ; 
it becomes clear by standing ; but it always retains certain sub- 
stances which lessen its quality, particularly when it is intended 
for burning in lamps. 

Greater obstacles are encountered in extracting the oil from some 
of the pulpy fruits than from seeds. In extracting olive-oil, the 
olives are crushed under millstones ; and the paste which results be- 
ing put into flat baskets of wicker-work, is subjected to the press. 
The first pressing yields virgin oil, which is used for the table. 
Having removed the baskets from the press, their contents are mix- 
ed with a little boiling water, replaced, and pressed again, by which 
a new quantity of oil is obtained. But the pulp is not yet exhausted ; 
by special treatment it still yields a quantity of oil of inferior quality, 
which is employed in the manufacture of soap. 

The fruit of the palm yields the oil which it contains with great 
readiness. I have extracted a butter of excellent quality and very 
agreeable taste by simply boiling the nuts or berries of the Palma 
real in water. The cocoa-nut yields two qualities of oil, according 
to the mode of extraction. To prepare the best kind, the fleshy 
part of the fruit is grated, and the pulp being pressed, a milky fluid 
is obtained, which yields the oil by boiling. An inferior quality of 
oil is obtained by causing the cocoa-nuts to putrefy ; when the putre- 
faction has advanced to a certain stage, the oily pulp is thrown into 
copper vessels and exposed to the sun, and the oil which then rises 
to the surface is skimmed off. This oil is brown, and has a strong 
smell ; it contains fatty acids which have probably been set at lib- 
erty by the putrid fermentation. 

The value of the produce in oleaginous seeds of a given extent 
of land, and the quantity of oil which these seeds will yield, depend, 
as may readily be conceived, on a variety of causes which it is not al- 
ways easy to appreciate with precision ; such as climate, the nature 
of the soil, the system of husbandry followed, &c. The observations 
of M. Gaujac of Dagny on the various plants usually cultivated for 
the sake of their oleaginous seeds, will however suffice to give a 
notion of their comparative productiveness in oil and cake : 



Crop. 


Seed produced 

per acre in 

Cwts. qrs, lbs. 


Whole quantity 

ofOilobtanied 

per Acre in lbs. 

avoird. 


Oil 

obtained 
per cent. 


Cake 
per cent. 


WINTER CROPS. 

Colewort 


19 15 

15 J 3 

16 2 18 

15 1 25 

16 2 18 
13 3 19 

17 1 16 
15 3 14 
15 1 25 
10 1 18 

7 3 21 
n 3 17 


875.4 
320.8 
641.6 
595.8 
641.6 
565.4 

545.8 
275.0 
385.0 
5(50.8 
229.0 
412.5 


40 
18 
33 
33 
33 
33 

27 
15 
22 
46 
2,5 
30 


54 
73 
62 
62 
62 
61 

72 
80 
69 
52 
70 
65 




Swedish turnip. . 
Curled colewort. . 
Turnip cabbage. . 

SPRING CROPS. 

Gold of Pleasure 

Sunflower 

Flax 

White poppy 

Hemp 

Summer rape 



12* 



138 OIL. 

M . Matthew de Dombasle made some comparative experiments at 
Roville on the cultivation of oleaginous plants. The results obtain- 
ed by this skilful agriculturist are much less favorable than those of 
M. Gaujac. Instead of 19 cwt. and 15 lbs. of colewort seed yield- 
ing 875.4 lbs. of oil per acre, M. de Dombasle only obtained 11 cwt. 
2 qrs. 21 lbs. yielding 392.3 lbs. of oil ; and the other kinds of seed 
in proportion. But as I have said already, the fertility of the soil, 
and the labor and pains bestowed upon it, may have contributed to 
the differences observed, because here the influence of climate may 
be overlooked. There is one circumstance, however, which may 
.explain the great differences in the quantity of oil obtained, which 
is the perfection of the press employed to extract it. In a general 
way oil-presses are so imperfect that they all leave a quantity of oil 
more or less in the cake. 

Here are two examples : from 2765 lbs. avoird. of fine colewort 
seed, gathered in 1842, and weighing 52^ lbs. per bushel, I obtained : 

lbs. 

Of oil 1130.5 

Of cake 1384.9 

^oss - 249.6 

2765.0 
In other terms, per cent. : 

Oil 40.81 

Cake 50.12 

Loss • 9.07 

100.00 

but by a careful analysis of the same seed in the laboratory, 50 per 
cent, of oil was obtained. 

2d. In 1840 and 1841, I made some experiments on the cultiva- 
tion of the madia sativa, intermixed with carrots in a fertile soil, 
well manured with farm dung. The crop of-ihe year 1840 was ex- 
cellent ; it required one hundred and twenty-seven days to come to 
maturity. 

lbs. 

Seed, husks deducted 2424 

Dried leaves employed as litter 7700 

Carrots without their leaves - • 31966 

The seed gave : 

Ofoil 635.8 

Of cake 17067.6 

100 of seed gave : 

Oil 26.24 

Cake 70.72 

Loss 33.4 

100.00 

These results agree pretty nearly with those which have been 
published by other agriculturists ; but the seed of this madia, which 
in the press gave 26.24 ofoil per cent., actually yielded 41 per cent, 
by analysis in the laboratory ; this difference between practical re- 
sults and those of the laboratory, shows us how large a quantity of 
oil is generally left in the cake. When the cake is used for feeding 



OIL. 139 

cattle, the loss is perhaps less to be regretted, inasmuch as the oily 
matter evidently assists in the fattening ; but when the cake is used 
as manure, the oil which it contains is almost entirely lost. 

It is often of importance to the agriculturist to ascertain precisely 
the quantity of fatty principles contained in oleaginous seeds. For 
this purpose, it is enough to bruise a given quantity of the seed and 
to digest it in successive portions of sulphuric ether. After a first 
digestion, the seed is bruised or pulverized anew, and the bruising 
is now accomplished without diiUculty. The process may be con- 
cluded by boiling with a mixture of equal parts of ether and alcohol. 
The ethereal solutions are decanted from the seed into a porcelain 
dish, the weight of which is known. The ether evaporates sponta- 
neously and the oil remains, the weight of which is then taken. 

The following sums may be taken as a pretty accurate estimate 
of the average quantity of oil yielded by the different oleaginous 
seeds : cole wort, winter rape, and other species of cruciferous plants, 
from 30 to 36 and 40 per cent. ; sunflower about 15 per cent. ; lin- 
seed from 11 to 22 ; poppy from 34 to 63 ; hempseed from 14 to 
26 ; olives from 9 to 11 ; walnuts 40 to 70 ; brazil nuts 60 ; castor- 
oil beans 62 ; sweet almonds 40 to 54 ; bitter almonds 28 to 46 ; 
madia sativa 26 to 28 per cent. 

The quantity of oil yielded by any seed subjected to the press is 
always considerably less than that which it contains, and the oil re- 
tained in the cake appears to be in larger proportion as the starch, 
the woody tissue, and the albuminous matters are more abundant. 
Thus maize, or Indian corn, which contains from 8 to 10 per cent, 
of fluid oil, gives mere traces of its presence under the press. 

The oily and fleshy fruits, such as those of the olive and the palm, 
yield a considerable quantity of oil. In the southern countries of 
Europe, particularly those which are so well protected that their 
olive-trees escaped the severe winter of 1789, as many as about 
816|^ lbs. of oil per acre are obtained, with proper care. The trees 
which were killed during this memorable winter sprouted again 
from the roots, and at the present day yield from about one quarter 
to one half the above quantity, according to the spaces left between 
them, which vary considerably. Under similar circumstances in 
regard to climate, it will readily be understood, that the quantity of 
produce will be influenced by the quantity of manure put into the 
ground. In some countries the olive is never manured, save indi- 
rectly ; that is to say, the ground between the trees is only manured 
with a view to another crop, which is grown between them ; in otber 
countries, again, in the neighborhood of Marseilles, for instance, it 
is the practice to manure the olive plantations, directly, every three 
or four years. 

The olive enjoys remarkable longevity ; I have mentioned one 
more than seven centuries old, and the term of the tree's existence 
appears only to be limited by the severe winters which cause it to 
die, from time to time. The produce must of course depend upon 
the age of the trees which compose a plantation. Up to eleven 
years, M. Gasparin shows that an olive-tree still remains all but un- 



140 OIL. 

productive ; and that the capital, and the interest upon the capital 
expended in this husbandry, must necessarily exceed the value of 
the produce up to the thirtieth year. Yet there are soils which are 
favorable to the olive, and which are useful for nothing else ; a hole 
in a rock suffices it, if the climate be favorable and it receive a 
proper dose of manure. But the grand cause of the disadvantages 
attending the cultivation of the olive, in France, is connected with 
the periodical occurrence of severe winters, which kill it ; in an 
interval of one hundred and twelve years, from 1709 to 1821, the 
olive plantations have suffered three great mortalities, which give a 
mean duration of about forty years to each planting. 

The cocoa-nut-tree is one of those which yields the largest quan- 
tity of oil with the least labor. The tree grows vigorously in all hot 
countries, at no great distance from the sea-shore ; wherever the tem- 
perature is from 78° to 83" Fahr., there the cocoa-nut thrives. It is 
also found on the banks of great rivers ; and the common practice in 
planting the cocoa-nut is to put a little salt in the hole. When trans- 
planted far from the banks of rivers, it thrives best in the neighborhood 
of human habitations, which has led the Indians to say that the 
cocoa-nut-tree loves to hear men talking under its shade. It is a 
tree which requires a soil impregnated with saline substances, and 
these are never wanting near the habitations of man. The tree 
bears its first flowers at the age of four years ; it produces fruit the 
following year, and continues to fructify until it is eighty years old. 
The spikes generally bear about twelve cocoa-nuts, and the number 
of nuts yielded by a tree in the course of a year may be taken at 
about fifty, which will yield about four litres, or rather more than 
seven pints of oil. Somewhere about ninety trees are generally 
found upon the acre of land, and these are capable of yielding about 
825 lbs. of oil annually.* 

The cocoa-nut- tree must, therefore, be regarded as among the 
most productive in oil, and also as the plant which requires the least 
outlay in its cultivation. Many species of palm yield oils of a very 
agreeable flavor for the table, and the produce of all answers admira- 
bly for the manufacture of soap. In the same proportion as agri- 
cultural industry extends in the equatorial regions of the globe, will 
the production of palm-oils increase, and this must necessarily in- 
fluence the cultivation of the olive in a very serious way. The cul- 
tivation of the tree being already threatened in Europe by that of 
the mulberry, and the prodigious extension in the trade in palm-oil 
upon the coasts of Africa in the course of the last few years, justify 
this conclusion. In 1817, palm-oil was considered as among the 
list of mere medicinal substances. At this period a London perfumer 
thought of making it into a soap for the toilet-table. From this time 
it became the staple of a bartering trade, which has been by so much 
the more profitable to the nations engaged in it, as the purchase iy 
always effected by manufactured articles, such as cotton and w^ool- 
len goods, hardware and crockery, arms, powder, &c. The future 

* Codazzi, Rcniiiien (ie la Geogralia de la Venezuela, p. 133. 



ESSENTIAL OILS. 141 

extent of this traffic may be imagined when it is known that in 1817 
the importation of palm-oil into England did not much exceed 
140,000 lbs., and that in 1836 it exceeded 70,000,000 lbs ! In tak- 
ing an acre of surface for unity, I find that on an average the 

Spring oleaginous plants yield 3201bs. of oil. 

Winter oleaginous plants 534 " 

The olive (south of Europe) 534 " 

The Palm (Atnerica) 801 " 

OF ESSENTIAL OILS. 

Aromatic plants owe the odors which characterize them to 
certain volatile principles, which by reason of certain properties 
which they have in conrmon with fat oils, such as insolubility in 
water, solubility in ether and alcohol, inflammability, &c., are gen- 
erally designated as essential oils. They are met with in all parts 
of plants ; but in one plant the oil is principally found in the flower, 
in another in the leaves, in another in the bark, &c. It sometimes 
happens that different parts of the same plant contain oils of different 
kinds. From the orange-tree, for instance, three distinct oils are 
obtained, as the flower, the leaf, or the rind of the fruit is treated. 
In some cases the volatile principle is so thoroughly imprisoned in 
the vegetable cells, that drying does not dissipate it ; in others, as 
in the greater number of flowers, the oil is formed on the surface, 
and is volatilized immediately after its formation. 

Essential oils are less volatile than water ; nevertheless they rise 
with the vapor of water, and it is by distillation that they are gen- 
erally extracted. The plant is put into a still or alembic containing 
water, and heat is applied : the vapor formed is condensed in the 
receiver, and the essence, by reason of its less density, is found 
swimming on the surface of the water which has been distilled. 
Some volatile oils are obtained by pressure, those of the citron and 
bergamotte, for example. 

The volatile principles of plants present somewhat varied physical 
properties. They are generally limpid and lighter than water ; yet 
tlicre are some which are more dense, and some, such as camphor, 
whi(;h are solid. With reference to their composition, volatile oils 
may be divided into three classes ; 1st. Oils composed entirely of 
carbon and hydrogen. 2d. Oils composed of carbon, hydrogen, 
and oxygen. 3d. Essential oils containing sulphur ; in addition to 
which, the essential oil of mustard seed contains azote. 

The essential oils undergo a change by long contact with the air : 
they absorb oxygen, and many of them become acidified ; under the 
influence of this gas, the oil of bitter almonds is changed into ben- 
zoic acid, the oil of cinnamon into cinn-amic acid ; in a general 
way, acetic acid is produced. The votatile oil obtained from any 
plant almost always contains two distinct principles, which may be 
separated by careful distillation ; one of these principles is a car- 
buret of hydrogen, the other an oxygenated oil. Camphor is com- 
bined with essential oils in many plants of the labiate family. It 



142 RESINS. 

exudes from certain laurels ; it is from the Laurus camphora that 
all the camphor of commerce is extracted in the East, the extraction 
being effected precisely by the same process as other essential oils. 
The chips of the Laurus camphora are put into iron stills, surmount- 
ed by earthenware capitals, in the inside of which a number of 
ropes made of rice-straw are stretched ; the camphor rises and is 
condensed on the surface of these cords in the state of a gray pow- 
der ; it is refined by sublimation. 

According to M. Dumas, camphor contains : 

Carbon ... 79.2 

Hydrogen 10.4 

0.\ygen 10.4 

100.0 



Essential oils almost always hold certain substances in solution 
which make them viscid or sticky. The balsams which exude from 
the bark of certain trees are nothing more than solutions of resin in 
essential oils. When the volatile oil has been dissipated by evapo- 
ration, the resin remains in the solid state. There is further a nat- 
ural relation in point of constitution between essential oils and resins. 
The greater number of essences absorb, as we have said, oxygen 
from the atmosphere, and by this absorption they become thick, and 
are changed into resins ; so that in one case the resin may be a 
product of the oxidation of an essential oil, in another it may merely 
be set at liberty by the dissipation of the essence which held it in 
solution. 

The resins constitute friable, or soft solids. They are fusible, 
extremely inflammable, and fixed. The resins are inodorous when 
pure : any odor which particular resins possess is generally attrib- 
uted to the essential oil which they still retain. The resins are in- 
soluble, or very sparingly soluble in water ; some of them dissolve 
readily in alcohol and in ether, and there are some also, such as 
copal, which are only soluble in very small quantity. Some resins 
show acid reaction ; they combine with bases, neutralizing them. 
The greater number of resinous matters^obtained from plants are 
regarded by chemists as mixtures of several particular resins, the 
study of which is not yet much advanced. Some resins are much 
emploj'ed in the arts, such as colophony and copal, &c. Several 
balsams are also in familiar use, particularly as medicines, such as 
the balsam of tolu, balsam of copaiba, &c. 

Colophony, or rosin, is extracted from different kinds of the genua 
Pinus. In the Landes, or sandy plains of Bordeaux, it is the mari- 
time pine which yields it. When the tree is from thirty to forty 
years of age, incisions are made in the trunk, beginning at the lower 
part, two or three times a week, and these are continued to the 
height of from 6 to 10 feet from the ground ; the last notch general- 
ly reaches this height about four years after the tree has been notch- 
ed for the first time. After this a new series of notches is begun 
on the opposite side, setting out from t!ip ground as before, and in 



VEGETABLE WAX. 143 

this way the whole circumference of the tree finally presents a series 
of notches, so that a tree will continue to yield turpentine during a 
period of sixty years. The turpentine which exudes from the 
notches is collected in a hole dug in the ground. 

Crude turpentine always contains a quantity of intermixed foreign 
matters, earth, stones, leaves, &c. It is purified by being melted, and 
filtered hot through a bed of straw. By distillation it is separated into 
essential oil, which is condensed in the receiver, and colophony, or 
rosin, which remains in the still. From 250 lbs. of turpentine 30 lbs. 
of essence and 220 lbs. of rosin are generally obtained. 

Copal is the produce of a tree which is somewhat common in 
Madagascar, and which M. Perrotet has determined to be the Hy- 
menaa verrucosa. The balsam or sap which exudes from the bark 
solidifies by contact with the air, and the resin is gathered in the 
state in which it is met with in commerce. 

CAOUTCHOUC. 

The caoutchouc which we have mentioned as forming a constituent 
in the sap of certain trees possesses some properties which assimi- 
late it with the resins. Thus pure ether, free from alcohol, dis- 
solves it. The greater number of the essential oils also dissolve it, 
particularly when hot. It is a solution of Indian rubber in rectified 
coal-tar oil or naphtha, which is now used so extensively for making 
stuffs water-proof. According to Faraday pure caoutchouc is 
composed of : 

Carbon 87.2 

Hydrogen 12.8 

100 

VEGETABLE WAX. 

Some plants produce a considerable quantity of a substance which 
bears a great resemblance to beeswax, and which in some of its 
properties approaches fatty bodies. Proust discovered that vegeta- 
ble wax formed part of the green fecula of a great number of vege- 
tables. In the common cabbage it occurs in large quantity. It is 
often met with forming a varnish on the surface of leaves, fruit, and 
barks ; the substance, however, is far from being identical ; it al- 
most always results from the combination of several distinct princi- 
ples which have not yet been sufficiently studied, but among which 
there are obviously some true fatty substances, that is to say, bodies 
capable of saponification, and matters analogous to the resins. I 
shall here mention a few of the vegetable waxes which are best 
known. 

Wax of the palm. This is the product of the Ceroxylon andicola, 
which is very abundant on the central Cordillera of New Grenada. 
I believe that I met with the lower limit of the ceroxylon upon the 
borders of the torrent of Tochecito, at the height of 7.500 feet above 
the level of the sea, and I followed it to an absolute elevation of 
about 8500 feet. The extreme mean temperatures compri.sed be- 



144 VEGETABLE WAX. 

tween these two limits may be valued at from 11° to 18° cent. ; 
51.8" to 64.4° Fahr. Towards the superior limit, the ceroxylon is 
exposed to a cold during the night, which approaches the freezing 
point of water ; it is therefore frequently met with in company with 
the great oak of America, whose climate it stands very well. 

The Indians obtain the wax by scraping the bark of the palm : 
the scrapings are then boiled in water ; the wax swims — without, 
however, melting ; it is merely softened, and the impurities which it 
contains are deposited. The matter thus purified is formed into 
balls and set to dry in the sun. It is with this substance, to which, 
however, a small quantity of fat is often added to render it less brit- 
tle, that the loaves of wax and the candles of the country are form- 
ed. After it has been melted, the cera de palma is of a deep yellow 
color, slightly translucid, as brittle as resin, and presenting a waxy 
fracture well characterized. Its melting point is a little above that 
of boiling water. Boiling alcohol dissolves it readily ; in cooling, 
the solution sets into a gelatinous mass. Ether dissolves it, as do 
the alkalies also. 

The wax of the palm consists of two principles ; one, fusible 
above the temperature of the boiling point of water, has all the 
physical properties of beeswax ; the other has the properties of 
resin. The composition of these substances upon analysis appears 
to be : 

Carbon 81.6 83.7 

Hydrogen 13.3 11.5 

Oxygen 5.1 J^ 

100 loo 

Wax of the Myrica cerifera. This wax is procured by boiling 
the fruit of several species of myrica in water. The tree is ex- 
tremely common in Louisiana and the temperate regions of the 
Andes. The fruit yields as much as 25 per cent, of wax, and a 
single shrub will yield from 24 to 30 lbs. of berries per annum. The 
crude wax is green, brittle, and, to be made into candles, requires 
the addition of a certain quantity of grease. According to M. Che- 
vreul the wax of the myrica is saponifiable. 

Wax^of the sugar-cane. The sugar-cane, particularly the violet 
variety, is covered with a powder or bloom of a waxy nature, which 
melts at the temperature of 82° cent. (180' Fahr.) This wax is so 
hard that it can be pulverized ; it may be made into candles, which, 
for the brilliancy of their light, are not inferior to those of sperma- 
ceti. M. Avequin, who directed attention to this subject, found by 
his experiments that a hectare (nearly 2| acres English) of the 
violet cane would furnish nearly 200 lbs. of wax. This wax is 
entirely soluble in boiling alcohol ; ether does not dissolve it in the 
cold. It appears to constitute a perfectly defined immediate vege- 
table principle, the composition of which, according to M. Dumas, 
is the following : 

Carbon 81.4 

Hydrogen 14. 1 

Oxygen 4.5 

100 



COLORING PRINCIPLES. 145 



CHLOROPHYLLE. 

The green matter which colors the leaves of vegetables is so 
designated. The attempts which have been made to isolate this 
matter, render it probable that it is somewhat of the nature of the 
vegetable waxes. Pelletier and Caventou endeavored to procure it 
by treating with cold alcohol, the pulp remaining after expressing 
ail the juices from the leaves of various herbaceous plants. By 
evaporation of the alcoholic liquor, a substance of a deep-green color 
was obtained, which is chlorophylle, a matter soluble in ether, in al- 
cohol, the oils, and the alkalies. Heated, it softens and is decom- 
posed before it melts. Acetic acid dissolves it in very appreciable 
quantities, so do the sulphuric and hydrochloric acids ; water precipi- 
tates it from these acid solutions. Berzelius says that chlorophylle 
exists only in very small quantity in plants, the leaves of a large tree 
will not perhaps contain more than about 100 grains. 

OF COLORING MATTERS. 

The matters which color the different parts of plants are extreme- 
ly numerous ; they present great varieties of shade, but are in gen- 
eral derived from red, yellow, and green. It is seldom that the col- 
oring matter of a plant exists isolatedly ; it is almost always allied 
w-ith one or several immediate principles, which are themselves fre- 
quently colored. Thus red coloring matters are generally combined 
with yellow principles, which having nearly the same properties, one 
is with great difficulty separated from another. 

Coloring matters are solid, inodorous, and have little taste. Some 
are soluble in water, others only dissolve in alcohol or in ether. 
All combine with the alkalies, and several of them unite intimately 
with acids ; the greater number are powerfully affected, undergo a 
true destruction, on exposure to the sun's rays, especially when in 
contact with moist air. It is familiarly known that vegetable tissues 
of all kinds, beeswax, &c., are bleached by exposure to the sun and _ 
air ; a high temperature acts like light : some vegetable colors are 
altered, bleached, when they remain exposed for a time to a tem- 
perature of from 334" to 424" Fahr. The oxygen of the air, which 
so quickly destroys certain colors, develops others under particular 
circumstances. 

Alkalies and acids, by uniting with vegetable, colors, almost al- 
ways modify their tints and often change them entirely. Many blues, 
for instance, become reds, under the agency of acids, greens or 
yellows under that of alkalies. By neutralizing the acid or the al- 
kali, the color generally resumes its original tint. 

Several substances, which are colorless in the state in which they 
are formed in vegetables, become colored by the united action of 
oxygen and an alkali, such as orceine, which is oxidated and be- 
comes blue under the simultaneous contact of air and ammonia. 
The greater number of vegetable coloring matters are destroyed 

13 



146 INDIftO. 

and bleached by chlorine. Many of the same matters unite inti- 
mately with alumina and oxide of tin to form lakes, insoluble com- 
pounds in which the colors remain fixed ; thus a colored liquid often 
becomes colorless when it is shaken with a hydrate of alumina. 
Charcoal, in a state of extreme subdivision, acts like alumina, and 
is a powerful discharger of colors in every-day use in the arts. 
Coloring matters are generally ternary compounds, though some of 
them also contain azote ; and several of them exhibit the remarka- 
ble phenomenon, that in undergoing oxidation in contact with am- 
monia they assimilate the azote of this alkali. I shall now indicate 
the origin and the mode of preparing a few of the more important of 
these coloring matters. 

Indigo. This substance, so essential in the art of dyeing, has been 
one of the great staples of trade with Asia from the most remote 
times. For a long while indigo was regarded in Europe as a min- 
eral substance found in India ; it used to be designated Indian or In- 
dia stone, whence the name of indigo. It was not until after the dis- 
covery of America that the true nature of this dye-stuff was known, 
although before this period indigo had been made in Arabia, Egypt, 
and even in the Island of Malta. 

Indigo is volatile, so that to obtain it pure, it is enough to put a 
small quantity into a platinum capsule, to cover it with a lid and to 
expose it to heat. Indigo is volatilized in the state of violet-colored 
vapor, and collects in crystals upon the middle part of the sides of 
the capsule. Indigo gives nothing to water or to ether. Alcohol 
takes up a very small quantity of it ; concentrated sulphuric acid 
dissolves and modifies it. 

All bodies greedy of oxygen appear to reduce or deoxidize this 
coloring principle ; it changes to a yellow, and becomes soluble in 
water in contact with alkalies ; by exposing the alkaline liquor charg- 
ed with the uncolored indigo to the air, it absorbs oxygen rapidly, 
and the indigo becomes insoluble and is precipitated with its original 
blue color. It is most easy, as said, to disoxidize indigo ; it is suf- 
ficient to bring it into contact with hydrogen gas in the nascent state, 
a condition which is readily secured by throwing iron or zinc filings 
into water containing the coloring matter previously dissolved in 
sulphuric acid. The disengagement of the hydrogen has scarcely 
commenced before the deep-blue color of the solution declines in 
intensity, and by and by it becomes of a very pale gray. When the 
discharge of color is completed, and no more hydrogen is disengaged, 
the colorless indigo begins to react upon the air, it absorbs oxygen, 
becomes again oxidized, and by and by the liquid has resumed its 
deep blue. This property of indigo of becoming soluble in alkaline 
solutions under the influence of disoxidizing bodies, is taken advan- 
tage of in our laboratories to obtain indigo in a state of purity, and 
in the arts to prepare a dyeing liquid. If a mixture be made of 15 
parts of the indigo of commerce reduced to fine powder, 10 parts of 
the sulphate of the protoxide of iron, 15 parts of lime, and 60 parts 
of water, and it be left for several days in a closed vessel, a color- 
less liquid is obtained. The liquid decanted and exposed to the air, 



INDIGO. 147 

deposites the whole of its indigo after a time. It is with similar in- 
gredients that the dyer prepares his bath for blue colors. It is into 
the alkaline liquor so prepared that the stuff to be dyed is dipped ; it 
is then hung up in the air, where it soon becomes blue ; it is re- 
dipped and re-exposed again and again, until it has acquired the 
depth of tint required, after which it is washed. The indigo, re- 
generated bj the action of the air, remains fixed in the stuff, and 
proves, as all the world knows, one of the most solid of colors. 

Chemists are not agreed as to the true nature of colorless indigo 
which may be obtained in the solid state. Some regard it as indigo 
disoxidized, others as indigo hydrogenized. On the latter supposi- 
tion, the hydrogen fixed would be derived from the water decom- 
posed, the oxygen of which would be transferred to the bodies greedy 
of this element, which are brought into play. The latter of these 
views appears to have the ascendant at the present time. However 
this may be, the following is the composition of indigo in each of 
its states, as determined by M. Dumas : 

Blue Indigo. White Indigo. 

Carbon 73.1 73.0 

Hydrogen 4.0 4.5 

Azote 10.8 10.6 

Oxygen 12.1 11.9 

100.0 100.0 

The plants which have hitherto been cultivated for the production of 
indigo with any profit are not numerous ; they belong to the genera 
Indigofera, Isatis et Nerium ; it is the genus Indigofera which is most 
generally cultivated, and the species designated argentea is found 
to be the most profitable. M. Chevreul has ascertained that in the 
living plant the indigo is not colored, and that it is consequently 
during its extraction that it becomes blue. The experiments of M. 
Pelletier upon the Polygonum tinctorium have confirmed the old re- 
searches of M. Chevreul. After having dried a leaf, Pelletier di- 
gested it with ether in a closed flask. The whole of the chlorophylle 
was dissolved, and the leaf became completely blanched ; by expo- 
sing it afterwards to the air, it turned blue if it contained indigo. 

In the republic of Venezuela, where I had an opportunity of study- 
ing the cultivation of the indigo-bearing plants, I saw that those soils 
were preferred which were light and susceptible of irrigation, a 
condition indeed which seems to me all but indispensable to the pro- 
fitable exercise of agriculture within the tropics. Indigo requires a 
warm climate ; at an elevation of about 3250 feet English above 
the level of the sea, where the mean temperature is not more than 
from 72° to 75° Fahr., the indigo husbandry cannot be carried on with 
advantage. Nevertheless, the Indigofera sylvestris is met with at an 
elevation of about 4900 feet above the level of the sea; but the at- 
tempts that have been made to obtain coloring matter from the plant 
have proved fruitless. In the valley d'Aragua, where the best plan- 
tations are met with, the plant is sowed in lines, the holes destined 
to receive the seed being about 1^' inch in depth, and somewhat 
more than 25 inches apart. A pinch of seed is dropped into each 



148 INDIGO. 

hole, and is covered with a little earth. The sowing takes place in 
soils that are moist but well drained, or in situations generally which 
have no system of irrigation at the period of the first rains. The 
seeds shoot in the course of the first week ; hoeing is performed in 
the course of the month. The first cutting takes place when the 
plant is coming into flower ; from fifty to sixty days generally inter- 
vene between the sowing and this cutting ; but the time necessary 
for the development of the leaves depends of course upon the cli- 
mate. In the neighborhood of Maracaibo, where the mean tempera- 
ture is about 78° Fahr., the gathering does not take place before the 
third month. The second cutting is performed from 45 to 50 days 
after the first ; and in this way several successive crops are obtained, 
until it is seen that the plant begins to degenerate. In good soils 
the indigo will last for two years ; in soils of inferior quality the 
crop is generally annual. 

The indigo harvest is immediately transported to tanks or large 
rectangular reservoirs built of masonry, and disposed on different 
levels, the superior reservoir or steeping tank being much larger 
than the two others. In the valley d'Aragua, there are some which 
are upwards of 20 feet long by 15 feet wide, and 20 inches in depth. 

The second, or mashing tank, is narrower and deeper than the for- 
mer. The third reservoir, or depositing tank, receives the liquor 
from the mashing tank, and in it the indigo subsides. In some manu- 
factories the third tank is not used, the deposition taking place in the 
mashing tank itself. 

The leaves, as the name implies, are thrown into the steeper, 
covered with water, and kept down by planks loaded with stones ; 
fermentation soon begins, and is allowed to continue during about 
eighteen hours ; and in the management of this first operation lies 
much of the art of the indigo-maker. By continuing it too long 
some portion of the coloring matter is destroyed ; by stopping it 
prematurely, a quantity of indigo is left in the leaves. The fermen- 
tation judged to be sufficiently advanced, the liquor is run off into 
the battery, and vigorously stirred until the grain is deposited. The 
fluid is then either let into the subsider, or left in the battery, and 
the deposition is complete at the end of about twenty hours ; the 
supernatent fluid is drawn off, and the indigo paste is scooped out 
and placed upon cloths to drain. When sufficiently firm, it is divided 
into lumps, and these are set in the shade to dry. In the valley 
d'Aragua it is estimated that with a good soil and careful manage- 
ment, each hectare of surface will yield 280 lbs. of marketable indi- 
g-o,* which is at the rate of about 112|^lbs. per English acre. 

In Carolina the cultivation of indigo appears to be much less pro- 
ductive than in the equinoctial regions, and the produce is of inferior 
quality. Tliere they sow in drills in the commencement of the 
rainy season which follows the vernal equinox, and the first crop is 
gathered about the beginning of July ; the second is secured two 
months afterwards, and when the autumn is mild, a third but insig- 

* Cadozzi, Kesiimen do lu Gengrafia de Venezuela, p. 144. 



INDIGO. 149 

nificant gathering takes place at the end of September. One negro 
is allowed to be able to work nearly two acres and a half of ground, 
from which about 160 lbs. of indigo are obtained. 

In the East Indies, upon the Coromandel coast, the growth of in- 
digo takes place upon sandy soils which are not irrigated, and in 
which vegetation is only possible during the rainy season. The 
loamy soils that admit of being irrigated are almost always reserved 
for the growth of rice. Immediately after the rains have set in, in 
December, the land receives two superficial ploughings ; the indigo 
is sown broad-cast, and the seed is harrowed in by dragging a fagot 
of bamboos over the surface, or by treading in by means of a flock 
of sheep. The first and principal gathering takes place in March ; 
any other crop that may be won is purely casual, and entirely de- 
pendent on the rain that falls. The crop rarely fails to feel the 
effects of the droughts which so frequently take place upon the 
Coromandel coast. It is never abundant, and the plants have little 
vigor. The harvest takes place after the flowering season. The 
crop is dried in the sun ; the plant is then beaten with switches, by 
which the leaves are detached from the stems, after which hey are 
exposed anew to the sun to secure their being perfectly dry. They 
are then reduced to coarse powder, and handed over to the indigo- 
maker, for in India the planter is never himself the manufacturer 
of the dye-stuff. 

On the coast of Coromandel, indigo is always extracted from the 
dried leaves, which, bruised and broken, are infused in three or four 
times their bulk of cold water during two or three hours ; the infu- 
sion is then filtered through a loose stufl made of goat's hair ; the 
filtered liquor is beaten for two hours, and after this about five gal- 
lons of lime-water are added for every 100 lbs. of dried leaves ; the 
mixture is stirred, and then left to settle. When the deposite has 
formed, the supernatent liquor is drawn off, the sediment is washed 
with a little boiling water, and being thrown upon a cloth, the indigo 
is drained and dried. It is then pressed, and the paste is cut into 
cubical lumps which are thoroughly dried in the air, and of which 
each weighs nearly 3 ounces. 

In the Indian method of manufacturing indigo, all is accomplished, 
as appears, without fermentation. This indigo is little esteemed in 
commerce ; it is heavy, of a pale blue, without much of the coppery 
aspect, rough on the broken surface, and presents here and there 
white points and vegetable debris. An acre of land on the Coro- 
mandel coast will produce from 48 to 49 lbs. of indigo annually. 

In spite of the high price of indigo, so small a quantity would 
scarcely cover the cost of production, were not the wages of the 
Indian laborer exceedingly low. The whole expense of producing a 
kilogramme, or 2/^ lbs. avoird. of indigo, according to M. Plagne, 
amounts to 3 francs, 20 cents, or about 2s. 8d. 

The cultivation of the indigo plant has been attempted several 
times in the south of Europe, particularly in Spain and Italy. 
There is no doubt but that indigo may be grown in Europe in those 
situations where for three or four months of the year the tempera- 

13"^ 



150 ORCHIL. 

ture is truly tropical ; but it seems probable that indigo can never 
be advantageously introduced into the agriculture of temperate coun- 
tries. 

Before indigo was so extensive an article of commerce as it is 
now, the south of France used to furnish almost all the markets of 
Europe with a blue dye, which was tiie best then known ; this was 
woad or pastel, the produce of the Isalis tinctoria. 

The isatis is sufficiently hardy to stand the cold of winter. In 
the south it is sown in March, and the seed springs in from eight to 
ten days. When the plant has five or six leaves, it is hoed with 
care. The crop is gathered when the leaves have acquired their 
greatest size, when they even begin to fade a little. The prepara- 
tion of woad bears a certain resemblance to that of indigo, and need 
not detain us here. 

The Polygorium tinctorium has of late attracted the attention of 
European cultivators. The plant is a native of China, where it has 
been cultivated from time immemorial ; it was brought into France 
and propagated under the care of M. de Lille. In the course of 
three months the plant has thrown out all its leaves, and in the south 
of France it never fails to ripen its seeds. From some experiments 
that have been made, the leaves of the polygonum appear to contain 
about the five-thousandth of their weight of indigo, and as the acre 
of land will yield between 11,000 and 11,900 lbs. weight of leaves, 
the produce of coloring matter will come to upwards of 56| lbs. 

The indigo obtained from the polygonum by the methods generally 
practised is not always of fine quality. It contains matters which, 
having been dissolved in the water used for maceration, had subse- 
quently been precipitated M. Vilmorin proposed to adopt on the 
great scale and in the manufactory, the methods which are used for 
purifying indigo in the laboratory, and which consists, as we have 
seen, in reducing colored and insoluble indigo to the colorless and 
insoluble state by means of a salt of the protoxide of iron in contact 
with an alkali, and subsequently to restore its color, and effect its 
precipitation by contact with the oxygen of the air. It is obvious 
that this method is perfectly applicable to the treatment of the whole 
of the indigoferous plants, and I believe that its adoption would be 
a great improvement. 

Orchil. This coloring matter, of a deep purple, is prepared from 
certain lichens or lung-worts ; that which is most prized is the rocella 
tinctoria, a native of the Canaries and Cape de A'erd islands. The 
variolaria dealbata, the var. aspergillia, and the lichen corallinus, 
which grow upon the rocks of Auvergne, and on the Alps and Pyre- 
nees, yield a produce of inferior quality. 

To obtain the orchil, the lichens are steeped for several days in 
their own weight of stale urine. Into the mixture about 5 per cent, 
of slaked lime in powder, a small quantity of arsenious acid, and a 
little alum, are introduced. Fermentation is by and by set up in the 
mass, which soon acquires the characteristic color of the orchil, but 
the tint is never complete until the expiration of about a month. 
Orchil readily communicates its peculiar color to water and to al- 



OKUHIL. 151 

cohol ; the watery solution, which is of a fine crimson, becomea 
colorless in a few days when it is kept in a flask hermetically seal- 
ed ; it regains its color by exposure to the air. The color which is 
acquired during the manufacture of orchil indicates that the lichens 
which yield it contain principles which are colorless in themselves, 
but which possess the singular property of becoming tinted under 
the influence of oxygen and ammonia ; for in the preparation of or- 
chil, the addition of urine and of lime has no other purpose beyond 
the introduction and development of this alkaline base. This view 
is shown to be correct, moreover, by the facts brought to light by 
MM. Heeren and Robiquet in their inquiries into the chemical con- 
stitution of the lichens. These chemists, in fact, succeeded in ex- 
tracting from several of the lichens which yield orchil a variety of 
colorless crystalline principles, in particular orcine, a substance 
which may be procured in very regular quadrangular prisms, and 
which is soluble in water and in alcohol. The watery solution of 
orcine mixed with ammonia and exposed to the air, becomes gradu- 
ally of a deeper and deeper red until it has the color of blood. The 
result of this oxidation of orcine under the action of ammonia is a 
coloring principle, orceine, into the constitution of which azote en- 
ters, an element which formed no part of orcine ; the analyses of 
these two substances made by M. Dumas, show this fact very dis- 
tinctly : 

Dr7 orcine. Orceine. 

Carbon 67.8 55.9 

Hydrogen 6.5 5.2 

Oxygen 25.7 31.0 

Azote • • 7.9 

100.0 100.0 

The lichens furnish several other principles analogous to orcine in 
their property of acquiring color under similar circumstances. 

Turnsole. This coloring matter is met with in commerce in two 
states, in mass and in thin cakes, and is procured from various 
lichens which have not yet been accurately specified ; in any case 
the substance is obtained by a process which differs little from that 
used in the manufacture of orchil. According to Mr. Kane, the 
coloring principles of turnsole are naturally red : they only become 
blue by combining with a base. The coloring matters which pre- 
dominate in turnsole are erythrolitmine and azolitmine, which are 
united with lime, potash, and ammonia, and further mixed with a 
considerable quantity of chalk and sand. The analyses of Kane 
show these two substances to have the following composition : — 

Erythrolitmine. Azolitmine. 

Carbon 55.6 49.8 

Hydrogen 8.4 5.4 

Oxygen 36.0 oxygen and azote 44.8 

100.0 100.0 

Turnsole occurs in trade in the shape of thin cakes, made up of 
chips, which are colored by the juice of chroyophoria tinclwia, a 
plant of the euphorbiaceous family, and of which the dyeing pro- 
perties appear to have been known to the earliest naturalists. 



152 MADDER. 

Madder. The root of the madder plant, so commonly employed 
in dyeing, contains more than one coloring matter ; but the most im 
portant of these, and that which constitutes the most useful element 
in the root, is alizarine, which was discovered by M. Robiquet. 

This substance is scarcely soluble in boiling water, but it is soluble 
in alcohol and still more so in ether, to which it imparts a golden 
yellow color. Alkaline liquors dissolve it and acquire a violet shade 
extremely agreeable to the eye. Alizarine is sublimed by the action 
of heat in the form of brilliant red needles. 

Madder, {rubia tinctorum,) is a native of the south ; but as it 
stands the winter, it is now cultivated almost all over Europe ; the 
plant is propagated by seeds, but there are certain advantages in 
using the sprouts which it throws out in the spring, and which read- 
ily take root. The plant requires a friable soil, sufficiently moist 
and highly manured to receive it ; the soil must be previously 
trenched or have had a very deep ploughing. In the east of France 
the planting takes place in April or May. The sprouts which are 
to be transplanted must be about 6 inches long. When the plant 
has struck root, the ground is cleaned, and fifteen or twenty days 
afterwards it is hoed ; in the course of the summer, several other 
hoeings are required. In Alsace, madder is planted in rows and in 
patches, a certain interval between each patch being left, the earth 
of which, in the month of March of the following year, is thrown 
over the ground that is planted. 

In the neighborhood of Haguenau, madder occupies the ground 
during two years ; the crop is gathered about the middle of Novem- 
ber. In some districts the plant remains in possession of the soil for 
five or six years. It is generally allowed that the amount of produce 
increases with time ; but in those countries, such as Alsace, where 
the plant is liable to be attacked by frost, it is generally thought 
prudent to gather it at the end of two years ; the harvest is then 
profitable, and in the course of the third or fourth or any succeeding 
winter, it might run the risk of such severe frost as would destroy it 
entirely. In southern countries the growers say that a crop of the 
fourth year exceeds very considerably one of the third year ; but it 
might be made a question whether the increase actually compensates 
for the longer occupation of the soil. And then when the cultivation 
is too much prolonged, a species of fungus is developed around the 
root and kills it. The crop of madder is gathered with the hoe, a 
laborious and costly process ; the roots are then dried in stoves and 
sent to the mill, so that it is in the state of powder that madder is 
met with in commerce. 

In Alsace, where madder remains two years in the ground, the 
mean produce per acre is estimated at about 3300 lbs. of dried roots, 
which is equal to an annual crop of about 1650 lbs. In the south of 
France, the mean annual produce amounts to something less than 
this, or to about 1560 lbs. ;* but the quantity has been estimated at a 
considerably lower amount still. 

* De Gasparin, AgricuUural Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 243. 



SAFFRON. 153 

Besides its roots, madder yields an abundance of leaves which are 
excellent forage. 

Reseda luteola, or dyers' weed, is a plant in common use, and owes 
its properties as a dye-stuff to the presence of a yellow crystalline 
principle, luteoline, discovered by M. Chevreul. This substance is 
soluble in ether, alcohol, and alkaline solutions. 

Dyers' weed is sown in autumn, stands through the winter, and 
ripens in the month of August following. The plant is gathered 
when it begins to turn yellow, and it is in a marketable state after it 
is dried. An acre of land will produce about 1833 lbs. weight of 
marketable dye-weed. 

Saffron. This plant is cultivated in the south of France and 
in Austria, but appears to be a native of Asia. Saffron requires a 
light and yet fertile soil in order to produce abundantly, although it 
may also be cultivated in soils of middling quality. The ground, 
trenched one spit deep, is set out with bulbs from an old plantation. 
In the south the transplanting takes place in the month of June. 
The first flowers appear towards the middle of October ; they are 
few during the first year. They are gathered, and the pistils removed ; 
the gathering continues for about a fortnight. In the course of the 
year which follows the planting, the ground receives a surface dress- 
ing ; it is freed from weeds, and the withered leaves are removed. 
The next gathering takes place at the same period as the former, 
but the flowers are now much more abundant, and the same process 
is continued until the roots are taken up, which they are in France 
at the end of the second year ; but in Austria the culture is contin- 
ued for a much longer period in the same piece of ground. The 
extraction of the pistils is an occupation in which the whole family 
of the saffron-grower take part, and employ their evenings ; in the 
course of an evening of five hours, eight persons will generally 
have drawn 250 grammes or about 8 ounces of saffron. In some 
places the pistils are dried in the sun, in others by being exposed in 
a sieve over a fire of twigs ; the latter process appears to be the 
better one. 

M. de Gasparin estimates at about 110 lbs. the saffron vfhich is 
gathered in the course of two years from about 2,''nths acres of land ; 
this would give a mean annual produce of about 43.7 lbs. per Eng- 
lish acre, and the price of saffron being from 27 to 28 shillings per 
pound, the value of the produce may easily be reckoned. In Aus- 
tria, where the crop is allowed to occupy the ground for three years, 
the produce has been estimated at about 19^ lbs. per acre per annum. 

Roucou is a dye-stuff extracted from tlie fruit of the Bixa orel- 
lana, a tree which is extremely common in the hot regions of South- 
ern America. 

Chica. This and the former dye-stuff are in use among the na- 
tive Americans for staining the skin. It is obtained from the leaves 
of the Bignonia cluca, which are of a beautiful green when fresh, 
but become red by drying. 

Chica has the color of cinnabar : it is without taste and without 
smell : a mass of this pigment may be compared to a mass of indigo, 



154 THE rOTATO. 

it only differs from this substance in its color. Like indigo, it ac- 
quires the metallic polish when rubbed with a hard body. It dis- 
solves in alcohol, and in alkaline solutions ; it mixes readily with 
grease, and it is with such a mixture that the Indians paint their 
bodies. Chica has been employed in cotton-dyeing, and the color is 
found to stand the sun perfectly. 



§ II.— COMPOSITION OF THE DIFFERENT FARTS OF 
PLANTS 

The immediate principles, the history of which has now been 
sketched, are met with in greater or lesser quantities in different 
parts of plants ; some of them are accumulated in the roots, others 
in the seeds, the barks, the leaves, &c. To complete the study of 
the chemical constitution of vegetables we have still to examine 
with reference to their composition certain parts or organs which 
present sufficient interest either from their extensive employment or 
their importance in an agricultural point of view. 

ROOTS AND TUBERS. 

The Potato, {Solanum tuberosum.) This plant is a native of 
South America. Two English travellers, Messrs. Caldcleugh and 
Baldwin, were so fortunate as to meet with it lately in the vild state in 
Chili, and not far from Monte Video. It is probable that the culti-^ 
vation of the potato spread from the mountains of Chili to the chain 
of the Andes, proceeding northward and obtaining a footing suc- 
cessively in Peru, at Quito, and upon the plateau of New Granada. 
This, as Humboldt observes, is precisely the course which the Incas 
took in their conquests. The potato does not appear to have been 
introduced into Mexico until after the European invasion of that 
country ; and it is well ascertained that it was not known there un- 
der the reign of Montezuma, although there are not wanting some 
who maintain that the potato was found in Virginia by the first colo- 
nists sent thither by Sir Walter Raleigh. It is said that it was then 
brought into England by Drake ; but it seems well established that 
long before Drake's time, namely, in 1545, a slave merchant, John 
Hawkins by name, had introduced tubers of the potato from the 
coasts of New Granada into Ireland. From Ireland the new plant 
passed into Belgium in 1590. Its cultivation was at this time neg- 
lected in Great Britain, until it was introduced by Raleigh at the 
beginning of the seventeenth century. When the potato came from 
A'^irginia to England for the second time it was already disseminated 
over Spain and Italy. It lias been ascertained that the potato has 
been cultivated on the great scale in Lancashire since 1684 ; in 
Saxony since 1717 ; in Scotland since 1728 ; in Prussia since 1738.* 

* Huinljoldt, Essai Poliliquc, t. ii. p. lli' 



THE POTATO. 155 

It was about the year 1710 that tlie potato began to spread in Ger- 
many, and that it there became a plant in common use ; it had, in- 
deed, before this time been cultivated in gardens ; and had even 
made its appearance at the tables of the rich some time previously. 
The severe dearth of the years 1771 and 1772* seemed necessary 
to lead the Germans to cultivate this useful plant upon the great 
scale. From this time it was shown that it was a substitute for 
bread ; and once fairly introduced, men were not long of perceiving 
the many recommendations which it possesses as an article of food. 
In fact, of all the useful plants which the migrations of communi- 
ties and distant voyages have brought to light, says M. Humboldt, 
there is none since the discovery of the cereals, that is to say, from 
time immemorial, which has had so decided an influence upon the 
well-being of mankind. In less than two centuries it may be said 
literally to have overspread the earth, or to have been welcomed in 
every country suited to its cultivation, so that at the present day it is 
found growing from the Cape of Good Hope to Iceland and Lap- 
land. " It is an interesting spectacle," adds the illustrious traveller 
quoted, " to see a plant, a native of mountains situated under the 
equator, advance towards the pole, and growing even more hardily 
than the grasses which yield us grain, brave the inclemencies of the 
North. "f The potato, like all other tubers, is a collection, an exu- 
berance which is evolved upon the subterraneous stems. Its varie- 
ties, which are very numerous, present rather remarkable differences 
in regard to size, form, color of the surface and of the interior, taste, 
and the time which they require to come to maturity. 

Next to water, fecula or starch is the principle which predominates 
in the potato, but it also contains a certain quantity of azotized mat- 
ter. Vauquelin has published a detailed account of the soluble mat- 
ters which are met with in the potato, and which, strange to say, 
have been neglected in the greater number of analyses of this useful 
vegetable which have been published. In 100 parts of potatoes he 
found : asparagine 0.1, albumen 0.7, azotized matter not defined 0.4, 
citrate of lime 1.2, and undetermined quantities of citrate of potash, 
free acetic acid, phosphate of potash, and phosphate of lime. 

In examining forty-eight varieties of potato he found that they 
contained in 100 parts : first, from 1 to H of pulp ; second, from 2 
to 3 of soluble or extractive substances ; third, from 20 to 28 of 
starch ; fourtli, from 07 to 78 of water. J 

In a variety grown in the neighborhood of Paris, Henry found the 
following ingredients, viz : pulp 6.8, starch 13.3, albumen 0.9, un- 
crystallizable sugar 3.3, acids and salts 1.4, fatty matter 0.1, and 
water 74.2=100.0. 

The proportion of starch varies considerably in the different va- 
rieties ; M. Payen has ascertained the extent of this diversity in a 
certain number of varieties grown in the same soil and under the 

* Thaer, Piincipes raisonn^s d'Agriculture, t. iv. p. 119. 

t Humbolrlt, op. cit. t. ii. p. 4G3. 

t Thtnard's Chemistry, vol. v. p. 82. 



156 



THE POTATO. 



same circumstances. The results are contained in the following 
table : 



Varieties. 


One of 

seed 
potatoes 
pro- 
duced. 


Produce per Acre. 


In 100 parts. 


Starch. 


t 
Starch per Acre. 


Dry 
matter. 


Water. 


The Rohan 

The great yellow . 
The Scotch shaws 
The late Iceland • . 

The Segonzac 

The Siberian 

The Duvillers 


58 
37 
32 
56 
32 
40 
40 


tons. cwts. qrs. lbs. 

14 14 2 16 
9 8 27 
8 3 2 2 

14 1 23 
8 3 2 2 

10 4 2 12 

10 4 2 12 


24.8 
31.3 
30.2 
20.6 

28.8 
22.2 
21.7 


75.2 
68.7 
69.8 
79.4 
71.2 
77.8 
78.3 


16.6 
23.3 
22.0 
12.3 
20.5 
14.0 
13.6 


tons. cwt. qrs. lbs. 

2 9 12 
2 3 3 4 
1 16 1 
1 15 1 2 

1 14 5 
1 8 2 16 
1 8 12 



In the particular circumstances under which this experiment was 
made, therefore, it is obvious that the Rohan variety contained the 
largest quantity of nutritive matter and starch. 

Potatoes which have been exposed to a temperature a few degrees 
below the freezing point of water, undergo so great a change in their 
texture, that it becomes difficult afterwards to extract the starch 
which they contain. They besides acquire so disagreeable a flavor, 
as all the world knows, that cattle sometimes refuse to eat them. 
After having ascertained that a potato has the same chemical com- 
position before and after congelation, M. Payen examined the starchy 
substance under the miftroscope, and found that the starch obtained 
from a frozen tuber presented itself in compound granular masses, 
"four or five times the size of the largest natural grains of starch. 
The pulp which remained upon the sieve in the preparation of this 
starch, was formed by a collection of cells, for the most part full of 
starch. It would therefore appear, that in consequence of the 
changes of volume of the fluid successively congealed and liquefied, 
the adhesion between the cells was destroyed : they become separa- 
ble with the slightest force, and merely part one from another by 
the action of the grater without being torn ; the larger number re- 
main unbroken and still filled with starch. This fact enables us to 
understand how potatoes, which have been frozen, will yield nearly 
the whole of their starch if they be treated before they are thawed. 
The cells then sealed up by the congealed water resist sufficiently 
to be broken by the teeth of the grater. Potatoes which have been 
frozen, are generally less farinaceous, at the same time that they have 
a decidedly sweet taste, which, according to M. Payen, is owing to 
vegetation having already made some progress in the tubers before 
congelation ; and we know that during germination there is always 
a formation of sugar at the expense of the fecula. Frosted potatoes 
have always a disagreeable taste, and a most unpleasant smell, so 
that in many places they are thrown upon the dunghill. The effect 
of the frost, in fact, is to set the juices vvhich are enclosed in the 
tissue of the potato at liberty, and the higher temperature which ac- 
companies and follows a thaw, exposes these juices to be acted upon 



THE POTATO. 157 

immediately by the air of the atmosphere, the consequence of which 
is, that they behave hke all other vegetable juices left to themselves, 
they become putrid. The putrid odor and the acrimony which are 
developed in the frosted potato, are by so much the more remarkable 
as a certain layer which exists immediately under the skin, and pre- 
sents various shades of color, tawny red or violet, is more highly 
developed. The tissue of this layer, examined under the micro- 
scope, was found by M. Payen to be totally without starch, but it 
contains the greater part of the (strong-smelling) coloring principles.* 
Tlxese principles, which give such unpleasant qualities to frosted 
potatoes, appear to be soluble, or at lea,st destructible by long expo- 
sure to the open air. Thus, if frosted potatoes be spread upon the 
ground and exposed to the weather, they dry spontaneously, become 
hard, whitened, and they may then be preserved for a very long 
time. This method of making use of frosted potatoes has been 
several times employed in practice, and it might perhaps be recom- 
mended for general adoption, were it only ascertained that by such 
treatment the tubers did not lose a great proportion of their most 
nutritive principle, viz. albumeft. However this may be, it is by a 
similar process that the natives of the Andes of Peru preserve and 
render more transportable the tubers which form a principal element 
in their food. In the steepest parts of the Peruvian Cordillera, 
nearly at the superior limit of vegetation, where a miserable field of 
barley and of Quinoa is only seen here and there, various tubers are 
collected in the hollows of the surface, such as the Maca, the Oca, 
the Ulluco. To preserve these they are exposed for several days to 
the alternate action of the frost and of the sun. At these great 
elevations, which are upwards of 13,120 feet above the level of the 
sea, it always freezes in clear nights when the air is moderately 
calm. During the day the rays of the sun, which strike with great 
force, dry the tubers rapidly, the watery juices of which have been 
shed into the amylaceous tissue by the effect of the preceding night's 
firost. Thoroughly dry, they may be kept for more than a year by 
being stored and protected from moisture. Various other modes of 
preparation are practised in regard to the other kinds of tubers which 
have been mentioned. By previously boiling the common potato, 
pealing it, and exposing it alternately to the frost of the night and 
the heat of the sun, until it is completely dry, the Indians prepare 
one of their most agreeable and wholesome articles of subsistence. 
The potato thrives in soils of very various kinds, provided it be 
sufficiently fertile, and the climate is favorable. This crop, like the 
beet, is generally planted in freshly manured ground, and is suc- 
ceeded in the autumn by a winter crop of corn — wheat or rye. The 
potato is set when apprehensions of frost are no longer entertained ; 
in the east of France the setting is generally ended about the mid- 
dle of May. In Alsace the cuttings of the potato are dropped at 
the distance of about a foot from each other in furrows made by the 
plough, the furrows being from 18 inches to nearly 2 feet apart. 

* Payen, Journal of Practical Agriculture, vol. i. p. 498. 
14 



158 THE POTATO. 

When the plants are from 10 to 12 inclies high, and the weather is 
dry, the furrows are lightly earthed up. In dry soils the earthing 
plough must not be carried very deeply ; and I may say that in the 
elevated table lands of America, where the natural drought of the 
climate is often to be apprehended, I have seen very fine crops of 
potatoes which had never been earthed up at all. The potato, like 
all plants that are hoed, requires considerable care ; but this care, 
as it is immediately profitable, is still more so remotely upon the 
white crops which are to follow. M. Crud reckons at 58.3 the 
number of days work that are required upon an acre of land which 
has received between 19 and 20 tons of manure. This is very 
nearly what we have found to be the truth at Bechelbronn, where for 
the same extent of surface, manured in the same way, we reckon 
fifty days labor of a man, and rather better than eleven days of a 
horse. 

In Europe the potato harvest takes place at the end of autumn. 
In the intertropical Cordillera, where the cultivation depends prin- 
cipally upon the heat of a very steady climate, the potato remains 
in the ground from four to seven months, as it is cultivated at a 
greater or less height above the level of the sea ; it succeeds best 
where the mean temperature ranges between 13° and 18° centigrade, 
(56° and 65° Fahr.) In Venezuela, indeed, it is still cultivated in 
places where the temperature is not far from 24° centigrade, (76.5° 
Fahr.;) but I am doubtful that the culture is then advantageous. In 
warm and moist regions the potato yields a large quantity of top, 
and few tubers. I have gathered some very bad ones at Riosucio 
de Engurama, a village situate at the distance of about 5900 feet 
above the level of the sea, where the mean and constant tempera- 
ture is about 22° centigrade, (72° Fahr.) 

The produce per acre, noted by different observers, is as follows : 



Countries. 




Tons. 


Cwts. 


Urs. 


lbs. 


Prussia . 


. 


5 


18 


2 


1 


Palatinate, mean often 


years 


5 


7 


1 


14 


Austria, mean of thirtee 


n years 


9 


11 


3 


10 


Brabant 




11 


17 





2 


West Flanders 




9 


13 





17 


Pays de Waes 




10 


8 


3 


13 


Pays de Tongres . 

England 

England 




6 

10 

9 


14 
2 
9 



2 



25 

7 
25 


Ireland 




9 


9 


3 


14 


Alsace 




8 


14 


3 


8 


Alsace (Bechelbronn) 
Neighborhood of Paris 
Venezuela 




5 

11 
9 


8 

2 

16 


1 

2 

1 


12 
13 

20* 



There is an obvious relation between the quantity of seed-potato 
planted and the amount of the crop. In Alsace from 25 to 30 
bushels per acre are usually planted. In some places too much seed 

* This is the produce of two harvests, which they gather in the same year. 



JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE. 159 

is used, in others not enough. It were very desirable that certain 
experiments were undertaken which should fix the proper quantity 
of seed-potato to be used for each variety of soil and situation. 

The Jerusalem Artichoke, {Helianthus tuberosus.) This plant is 
generally believed to be a native of South America, but M. de Hum- 
boldt never met with it there, and according to M. Correa, it does 
not exist in Brazil. The property which the tubers of this plant 
have of resisting the cold of our winters, and several botanico-geo- 
graphical considerations, lead M. A. Brongniart to presume that the 
plant belongs to the more northern parts of Mexico. 

The Jerusalem artichoke rises to a height of from 9 to 10 feet ; 
it flowers late, and I have not yet seen it ripen its seeds. It is pro- 
pagated by the tubers which it produces, and which are regarded, 
for good reason, as most excellent food for cattle ; in times when 
the potato was not very extensively known, it also entered pretty 
largely into the food of man ; when boiled, its taste brings to mind 
that of the artichoke, whence the name. 

The tuber of the Jerusalem artichoke, from an analysis of M. 
Braconnot, appears to contain in 100 parts : 

Uncrystallizable sugar ..... 14.80 

Inuline 3.00 

Gum 1.22 

Albumen 0.99 

Fatty matter 0.09 

Citrates of potash and lime ..... 1.15 

Phosphates of potash and lime . 0.20 

Sulphate of potash . . . 0,12 

Chloride of potassium ..... 0.08 

Malates and tartrates of potash and lime . . 0.05 

Woody fibre 1.22 

Silica 0.03 

Water 77.05 

100.00 

M. Payen found a larger proportion of sugar in this tuber than that 

stated above, and he ascertained that the fatty matter consists chiefly 

of stearine and elaine. In the Jerusalem artichoke I myself found : 

Of dry matter 20.8 

Water 79.2 

100.0 

One trial for azote would lead me to conclude that M. Braconnot 
had estimated the albumen too low in his analysis, or, as is more 
probable, that several azotized principles had escaped him. The 
dried tuber gave me 0.16 of azote, a number which would indicate 
1.0 as the proportion of vegetable albumen. There are few plants 
more hardy and so little nice about soil as the Jerusalem artichoke ; 
it succeeds everywhere, with the single condition that the ground be 
not wet. The tubers are planted exactly like those of the potato, 
and nearly at the same time ; but this is a process that is performed 
but rarely, inasmuch as the cultivation of the helianthus is incessant, 



162 CINCHONA BAKKS. 

affected in the same way, recommended the bark. The medicine 
was completely successful ; and to show her gratitude, the vice- 
queen had large quantities brought down from the mountains for 
distribution among persons affected with fever. It was from this 
circumstance that the bark was at first known under the name of 
the Countess's powder. By and by, the members of the college of 
Jesuits having been charged with its distribution, it of course be- 
came the Jesuits' bark or powder. Lastly, the Cardinal de Lugo 
having brought it to Rome, the new medicine was known under the 
name of the cardinal's powder. 

The cinchonas are rnet with principally in forests at a considerable 
elevation above the level of the sea, in a temperate climate, and 
growing in a stony soil. The proper period for gathering is known 
by the circumstance of the inner surface of the bark, when detached 
from a branch, acquiring in a few minutes a red, yellow, or orange 
tint, according to the species. 

The trees are cut down one or two days before the process of 
barking begins, by which the operation is rendered more easy, and 
the cuticle is no longer liable to be rubbed off. The bark of the 
trunk and branches is removed by means of a large knife, in strips, 
or bands, which are kept as broad as possible. The bark is placed 
upon cloths and put to dry in the sun, each piece being kept isolated, 
in order to facilitate the drying, and especially to favor the quilling 
or rolling up ; when the bark is dried in a heap, and when the pieces 
touch, it often acquires a most disagreeable odor in consequence of 
incipient putrefaction, and the quilling does not take place.* The 
bark, when thoroughly dry, is packed in bullocks' hides and sent to 
Europe. From my own observations, and those that have been 
supplied me by M. Goulot, the different species of bark appear to be 
distributed upon the mountains of New Granada in the following 
order : 

Heights where 

most abumlant. Temperature. 

Gray bark, C. lancifolia 6.560 feet lO" (66J F.) 

White bark, C. ovalilolia 4264 " 21° (TO F.) 

Red bark, C. oblongifolia S^mi " 24 " (75* F.) 

Yellow bark, C. cordifolia 1908 " 25° (77 F.) 

Pelletier and Caventou discovered in the gray bark, 1st, cincho- 
nine in combination with quinic acid ; 2d, a fatty substance ; 3d, red 
and yellow coloring matters; 4th, tannin ; 5th, quinatc of lime ; 6th, 
gum ; 7th, starch ; 8th, woody matter. In the yellow and red bark 
these learned chemists found the same principles, and, moreover, 
quinate of quinine. 

Barks of the willow and poplar. Decoctions of these barks are 
often employed with success in the treatment of intermittent fever. 
In searching after the active principle of these medicines, M. Roux 
discovered the particular substance, salicine, in the bark of the wil- 
low, (salix helix,) the medicinal effect of which is analogous with 
that of the febrifuge principles of the true barks. M. Braconnot has 

* Ruiz, Qtiinologia. 



CORK. 163 

further succeeded in obtaining another crystalline matter from the 
leaves of the aspen (populus tremula) populine. 

Corl:. The oak which yields cork is known in Spain under the 
name of the alcornoque. It forms extensive forests upon the abrupt 
slopes of the Pyrenees, where it is often seen growing upon arid and 
stony soils, that seem doomed to eternal sterility. The cork-tree 
has flexible and strong roots, which creep over the naked surface of 
the granitic masses, turning round blocks, and searching everywhere 
for fissures and collections of sand and alluvium, into which they 
penetrate deeply, in search of the nourishment necessary to the tree. 
At maturity, the alcornoque rises to a height of sixty-five feet, and 
its trunk may be three feet and a quarter in diameter. 

In the Spanish Pyrenees, the superior limit of the cork-tree region, 
is that of the vine, about 1640 feet above the level of the Mediter- 
ranean. In France this tree grows luxuriantly in the communes of 
Passa, Lauro, &c., the mean elevation of which is 1148 feet. In 
Spain, as in France, the soils on which the cork forests grow are of 
primitive origin ; and it is said, on good authority, that the cork- 
tree only grows on soils derived from granite, gneiss, mica-slate, or 
porphyry, and never on soils of calcareous origin. 

The cork-tree is reproduced spontaneously on these silicious soils, 
among cistuses and heaths ; but the reproduction in this way is so 
slow, that art often interferes advantageously to aid it. There are 
many varieties of cork oak ; and as that which is covered with a 
smooth and grayish cuticle, yields the article which is most prized 
in commerce, the seeds of this variety ought to be selected for sow- 
ing. The acorns of the cork-oak are tumid, of considerable size, 
and a sweet taste ; the acorns ripen from October to December, and 
are much employed as food for hogs. The Catalonians sow the 
acorns in a cultivated soil at the same time that they plant the vine, 
and for twenty or twenty-five years the produce of the vine compen- 
sates the outlay upon the young cork-trees; but the produce of the 
vine diminishes as the cork-tree overshadows it, and finally there 
comes a time when the vines die out completely. The cork-tree is 
of slow growth, and at four years of age it may be from thirty-six to 
forty inches in height, and requires incessant care until the trunk is 
from seven to ten feet high, at which time it may be about twenty 
years of age ; and its total height, including its branches, may be 
about twenty-two feet. 

The barking of the cork-tree begins about the middle of July, and 
may be continued so long as the sap is in motion. When stripped 
off, good cork is formed of from ten to twelve layers, each of which 
indicates an annual deposition. The two outer layers constitute the 
cuticle ; the others adhere closely together, and although of variable 
thickness they present a homogeneous mass. The time for remov- 
ing the cork is indicated by the interior acquiring a slightly rosy 
tint, which happens about the tenth year. The barking is performed 
by means of an axe, with which a cut is made the whole length of 
the trunk, care being taken not to wound the woody layers ; two 
other cross cuts are then made at the top and bottom of the trunk. 



162 CINCHONA 13AKKS. 

affected in the same way, recommended the bark. The medicine 
was completely successful ; and to show her gratitude, the vice- 
queen had large quantities brought down from the mountains for 
distribution among persons affected with fever. It was from this 
circumstance that the bark was at first known under the name of 
the Countess's powder. By and by, the members of the college of 
Jesuits having been charged with its distribution, it of course be- 
came the Jesuits' bark or powder. Lastly, the Cardinal de Lugo 
having brought it to Rome, the new medicine was known under the 
name of the cardinal's powder. 

The cinchonas are rnet with principally in forests at a considerable 
elevation above the level of the sea, in a temperate climate, and 
grovving in a stony soil. The proper period for gathering is known 
by the circumstance of the inner surface of the bark, when detached 
from a branch, acquiring in a few minutes a red, yellow, or orange 
tint, according to the species. 

The trees are cut down one or two days before the process of 
barking begins, by which the operation is rendered more easy, and 
the cuticle is no longer liable to be rubbed off. The bark of the 
trunk and branches is removed by means of a large knife, in strips, 
or bands, which are kept as broad as possible. The bark is placed 
upon cloths and put to dry in the sun, each piece being kept isolated, 
in order to facilitate the drying, and especially to favor the quilling 
or rolling up ; when the bark is dried in a heap, and when the pieces 
touch, it often acquires a most disagreeable odor in consequence of 
incipient putrefaction, and the quilling does not take place.* The 
bark, when thoroughly dry, is packed in bullocks' hides and sent to 
Europe. From my own observations, and those that have been 
supplied me by M. Goulot, the different species of bark appear to be 
distributed upon the mountains of New Granada in the following 
order : 

Heights where 

mosi abundant. Temperature. 

Graybark, C. lancifolia 6.560 feet 19° (66J F.) 

White bark, C. ovalitolia 4264 " 21° (70 F.) 

Red bark, C. oblongifolia 2296 " 24°(75iF.) 

Yellow bark, C. cordifolia 1968 " 25° (77 F.) 

Pelletier and Caventou discovered in the gray bark, 1st, cincho- 
nine in combination with quinic acid ; 2d, a fatty substance ; 3d, red 
and yellow coloring matters; 4th, tannin ; 5th, quinate of lime ; 6th, 
gum ; 7th, starch ; 8th, woody matter. In the yellow and red bark 
these learned chemists found the same principles, and, moreover, 
quinate of quinine. 

Barks of the loillow and poplar. Decoctions of these barks are 
often employed with success in the treatment of intermittent fever. 
In searching after the active principle of tiiese medicines, M. Roux 
discovered the particular substance, salicine, in the bark of the wil- 
low, (salix helix,) the medicinal effect of which is analogous with 
that of the febrifuge principles of the true barks. M. Braconnot has 

* Ruiz, Ciuinologia. 



CORK. 163 

further succeeded in obtaining another crystalline matter from the 
leaves of the aspen (populus tremula) populine. 

Cork. The oak which yields cork is known in Spain under the 
name of the alcornoque. It forms extensive forests upon the abrupt 
slopes of the Pyrenees, where it is often seen growing upon arid and 
stony soils, that seem doomed to eternal sterility. The cork-tree 
has flexible and strong roots, which creep over the naked surface of 
the granitic masses, turning round blocks, and searching everywhere 
for fissujes and collections of sand and alluvium, into which they 
penetrate deeply, in search of the nourishment necessary to the tree. 
At maturity, the alcornoque rises to a, height of sixty-five feet, and 
its trunk may be three feet and a quarter in diameter. 

In the Spanish Pyrenees, the superior limit of the cork-tree region, 
is that of the vine, about 1640 feet above the level of the Mediter- 
ranean. In France this tree grows luxuriantly in the communes of 
Passa, Lauro, &c., the mean elevation of which is 1148 feet. In 
Spain, as in France, the soils on which the cork forests grow are of 
primitive origin ; and it is said, on good authority, that the cork- 
tree only grows on soils derived from granite, gneiss, mica-slate, or 
porphyry, and never on soils of calcareous origin. 

The cork-tree is reproduced spontaneously on these silicious soils, 
among cistuses and heaths ; but the reproduction in this way is so 
slow, that art often interferes advantageously to aid it. There are 
many varieties of cork oak ; and as that which is covered with a 
smooth and grayish cuticle, yields the article which is most prized 
in commerce, the seeds of this variety ought to be selected for sow- 
ing. The acorns of the cork-oak are tumid, of considerable size, 
and a sweet taste ; the acorns ripen from October to December, and 
are much employed as food for hogs. The Catalonians sow the 
acorns in a cultivated soil at the same time that they plant the vine, 
and for twenty or twenty-five years the produce of the vine compen- 
sates the outlay upon the young cork-trees; but the produce of the 
vine diminishes as the cork-tree overshadows it, and finally there 
comes a time when the vines die out completely. The cork-tree is 
of slow growth, and at four years of age it may be from thirty-six to 
forty inches in height, and requires incessant care until the trunk is 
from seven to ten feet high, at which time it may be about twenty 
years of age ; and its total height, including its branches, inay be 
about twenty-two feet. 

The barking of the cork-tree begins about the middle of July, and 
may be continued so long as the sap is in motion. When stripped 
off, good cork is formed of from ten to twelve layers, each of which 
indicates an annual deposition. The two outer layers constitute the 
cuticle ; the others adhere closely together, and although of variable 
thickness they present a homogeneous mass. The time for remov- 
ing the cork is indicated by the interior acquiring a slightly rosy 
tint, which happens about the tenth year. The barking is performed 
by means of an axe, w'ith which a cut is made the whole length of 
the trunk, care being taken not to wound the woody layers ; two 
other cross cuts are then made at the top and bottom of the trunk. 



164 TOBACCO. 

By means of the handle of the axe, which is shaped like a wedge, 
forced into the vertical cut, the cork is then loosened and stripped 
from the living hark beneath it, the whole covering of the tree being 
often taken away in a single piece, although it is more commonly re- 
moved in two pieces. The process of barking is very easy when 
the sap is abundant. 

The cork-tree must be about forty years of age before its bark has 
any commercial value ; that of a tree of twenty years is always 
treated as rubbish. An oak a century old may furnish 200 lbs. of 
marketable cork ; as many as 480 lbs. however have been taken 
from a single tree ; the mean produce may be reckoned at about 100 
lbs. per tree ; to fit it for the market, cork undergoes a variety of 
preparations which need not detain us here. 



The herbaceous parts of vegetables have all a very similar com- 
position, if they be regarded in the most general point of view. The 
leaves and green stems, along with the woody fibre which forms in 
some sort tlieir skeleton, always contain all)umen or an analogous 
azotized principle, saccharine and gummy substances, chlorophylle, 
wax, fatty and resinous substances, free or combined acids, and fre- 
quently also essential oils. Such is the general constitution which 
chemists agree in assigning to clover, hay, leaves, in a word to green 
forage of all kinds ; nevertheless, to this constitution, which may be 
regarded as standard, we have frequently other particular matters 
added, some of which we have already studied, and which by their 
medicinal properties, or the economic uses they possess, render the 
plants that contain them of high importance in an agricultural point 
of view. I shall here only speak of two of these plants, tobacco 
and tea, the leaves of which, almost in universal use, are a source 
of great commercial prosperity to the people who cultivate them. 

Tobacco, (Nicotiana iabacum,) a native of America, appears to 
have been introduced into Spain and Portugal about the middle of 
the sixteenth century by Fernandez de Toledo. Its name is gen- 
erally believed to be derived from that of the Island of Tobago, one 
of the West India islands, at no very great distance from the coast 
of Venezuela, whence the first importations were made. Nicot, the 
French ambassador to Portugal, first made its use known in France, 
whence the name nicotiana. At the present time, the cultivation of 
tobacco appears to have spread almost over the whole surface of the 
globe. 

Tobacco requires a somewhat friable soil, rich in humus ; it con- 
sequently succeeds in lands just broken in. In America the mode 
of cultivation and of preparation are almost everywhere the same. 

In Venezuela the seed is sown in a very rich loam, and after from 
forty to fifty days, the young plants are transplanted in rows, distant 
a little more than three feet from one another, the ])lants being about 
two feet apart ; the transj)lanted plant is generally covered with a 
banana leaf for a few days to preserve it from the burning rays of 



TOBACCO. 165 

the sun. When the plant is about eighteen inches high, a bud is 
formed at the superior extremity ; this bud and any others that may 
appear are removed, as well as any sprouts which show themselves 
on the stem. By this treatment the tobacco becomes bushy and 
thick ; by and by the leaves acquire a decidedly blue tint, and the 
time of gathering is indicated by the appearance of a stain of a deep- 
blue color near the pedicle. The leaves do not all ripen simultane- 
ously, so that the business of the planter, in gathering those that 
appear ripe, is incessant for a certain time. 

After they are gathered, the leaves are carried under sheds, where 
they are disposed two and two upon hurdles arranged for their re- 
ception. The tobacco soon becomes yellow and pliant, and the ribs 
of the leaves having been removed, they are twisted into a rope 
which is coiled up into a mass of the weight of from sixty to eighty 
pounds. These coils are placed upon a bed made with damaged 
leaves and the ribs which have been removed. The whole is cover- 
ed, and left to ferment during forty-eight hours, a little water being 
supplied if the tobacco appears too dry ; during the fermentation the 
temperature rises, and the process having been carried sufficiently 
far, the coils are exposed separately to the air ; they are then un- 
rolled, and hung up under sheds to dry completely. 

The vertical zone in which the cultivation of tobacco within the 
tropics is carried on, is extensive ; it reaches from the level of the 
sea to an elevation of about 5,900 feet above it. The time during 
which the crop remains on the ground varies according to the mean 
temperature of the place ; according to M. Codazzi, the leaves are 
gathered one hundred and fifty days after the sowing in the hottest 
regions of the coast of Venezuela. In more elevated situations, 
where the thermometer ranges from 65° to 68" Fahr., the first leaves 
are not fit to be gathered until after about seven months and a half 
from the sowing. 

In Ceylon, tobacco is cultivated almost precisely as in America. 
There they also prevent the plant rising in height, and they limit the 
number of leaves upon each stem according to the quality of the 
tobacco which they desire to grow. By leaving the plant with no 
more than from ten to twelve leaves, the most esteemed quality is 
obtained ; if eighteen or twenty leaves be left, the tobacco is far 
from having the same strength. Lastly, in leaving the plant to itself, 
by suffering the stem to run up and to flourish, a large crop is 
obtained, but the produce is not esteemed. The leaves gathered 
from the plant in this state of maturity are often held fit for con- 
sumption after being simply dried without further preparation. The 
tobacco is then yellow, extremely mild, and perfectly suited to the 
immoderate use made of it by the Cingalese. 

If the mode of cultivation enables the tobacco-grower to obtain a 
superior quality at the cost of quantity, it is still indubitable that 
climate exercises the chief influence on the quality of the article. 
That which is grown in the temperate regions of the Andes, in 
Virginia, and in P^urope, can in no way be compared with the tobacco 
of the Havana, of Varinas, of Giron, of the valley of Cauca. 



166 TEA. 

The cultivation of tobacco has appeared to me more especially ad- 
vantageous in localities where the mean temperature does not fall 
below 75° Fahr. 

Tobacco is decidedly a plant of a hot climate ; there only does it 
yield a produce of the best quality. In Venezuela, where its cultiva- 
tion is followed with great skill, and in situations where the tempe- 
rature of the climate keeps from 77° to 80" Fahr., about five plants 
are held necessary to produce 1 lb. of tobacco ; and as a mean, 1 1 
cwt. 1 qr. 23 lbs. of the prepared article are produced from an acre 
of unmanured land. 

In Alsace, tobacco is sown about the middle of March ; the trans- 
planting takes place in the beginning of June, and the harvest fol- 
lows in autumn. The husbandry is very similar to that which has 
been already described, each plant being left with eight or ten leaves. 
Schwertz reckons the produce at about 15 quintals per hectare of 
two and a half acres, which is equal to about 12 cwt. I qr. per Eng- 
lish acre. Thaer estimates the produce in Prussia at 11 cwt. 1 qr. 
23 lbs. per acre. 

The consumption of tobacco has lately increased considerably 
throughout the whole of Europe. In France, government sold to- 
bacco in one form or another to the extent of 31,116,340 lbs. in the 
course of the year 1837. Public documents show that in 1841 there 
were in France 8,158 hectares, or 20,175 acres under tobacco, 
which yielded 21,261,064 lbs. of the article ; the difference between 
the quantity produced and the quantity consumed is of course sup- 
plied by importation. 

The virtues of tobacco very probably reside in the volatile vege- 
table alkali, nicotine, which it contains. The analyses of M. Pos- 
sclt and Kiemann show the leaf of tobacco to be composed as follows : 
Nicotine 0.07, extractive matter 2.87, gum 1.74, a green resin 0.27, 
albumen 0.20, gluten 1.05, malic acid 0.51,malate of ammonia 0.12, 
sulpliate of potash 0.05, chloride of potassium 0.06, nitrate and ma- 
late of potash 0.21, phosphate of lime 0.17, malatc of lime 0.72, 
silica 0.09, woody matter 4.97, and water 86.84, — 100.00. During 
the fermentation of the leaves, there is always a formation of am- 
moniacal salts. 

Tea, the use of which is and has so long been universal in the 
Chinese empire, began to be known in Europe in the seventeenth 
century, when it was imported by the Dutch East India Company. 
In 1669, the importation of tea into England did not exceed 1 cwt. ; 
in 1833, the East India Company set aside for the consumption of 
Great Britain alone nearly 24,200,000 of pounds ! 

The tea plant commonly attains a hciglit of from three to about 
five feet. In China it blossoms in the early part of the spring, and 
ripens its seeds in December and January. Its branches are cover- 
ed with short thick leaves of a deep-green color and elliptical form. 
It is one of the most hardy plants, and thrives from tiie equator to 
the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude ; but the districts best adapt- 
ed to its growth appear to be comprised between the twenty-fifth 



TEA. 167 

and thirty-third degrees of latitude.* Tea requires a moist climate, 
and a light and sandy soil. No manure is given, and no attention 
is paid to the nature of the soil where irrigation is practicable. 

The shrub is propagated from seed. Several seeds are dropped 
into holes at the distance of from three to six feet apart, and the 
plant begins to produce from the third year : the gathering is done 
by the hand, the leaves being picked off; but a few are always left 
upon each branch. The number of gatherings made in the same 
year varies from one to three, according to the age of the plant. It 
is very seldom indeed that a fourth gathering is practised. In 
China the tea harvest begins about the middle of April, a period at 
which the leaf buds appear surrounded by a slight cottony down. 
The first gathering is very small, but it constitutes the highest- 
priced tea, the Shou-chun or tea of the first growth. The second 
gathering takes place in June, when the branches are covered with 
leaves of a pretty deep color; these leaves are very abundant, but 
inferior in quality to the buds of the former gathering ; they con- 
stitute the tea called Urh-chun, or tea of the second growth. The 
third gathering is performed a month later, and the produce passes 
by the name of the San-chun, or tea of the third growth. The 
leaves are now of a deep-green color, tough, and are manufactured 
into the most common kinds of tea. 

Considerable plantations of tea are now established in Assam, in 
British India, and in the Brazils, and it seems not improbable that 
the plant may be cultivated at some future day in Europe. 

According to Guillemin, who studied the cultivation and prepara- 
tion of tea in the Brazils, the leaves are dried as soon as they are 
gathered. From four to six pounds are thrown into an iron pot, 
the interior of which is polished, and which may be somewhat more 
than three feet in diameter, by about a foot in depth. The temper- 
ature of the pot is maintained at about the boiling point of water ; a 
negro stirs the leaves in all directions with his hand, until they be- 
come quite soft and pliant, so that they can be moulded into pellets 
by movement between the hands. When the leaves are in this 
state, they are thrown upon a tray made of bamboo, and strongly 
kneaded for a quarter of an hoar, so as to force out a green sap of a 
disagreeable taste. The kneaded leaves are then returned to the 
pot, and dried completely, being all the while stirred about with the 
hand, being separated when they stick together, and being continual- 
ly tossed up in order to prevent them adhering or getting scorched 
by remaining too long in contact with the metal. During tliis pro- 
cess, which lasts for some half hour, a large quantity of dust is 
disengaged, which proceeds from the cottony down with which the 
leaves are covered. By this rapid drying, the leaves crisp and curl 
up of themselves, and acquire the appearance of the tea that is in 
every-day use. On being taken from the drying pot, the tea is 
thrown upon a sieve of a certain mesh, and the leaves which have 
rolled themselves up into the smallest compass, and wliich are those 

* Robinson, a Descriptive Account of Assam, p. 131. 



168 SEF.DS. 

which proceed from the buds, are separated from the others ; these, 
after having been winnowed, receive anew touch of the fire, when they 
acquire a leaden-gray color, and constitute the tea of the best quali- 
ty, which in the Brazils passes by the name of Imperial or Uchim 
tea. The leaves which remain upon the sieve are heated, winnowed, 
and sifted again, and the produce is fine Hyson tea ; and by the 
same means other varieties are procured, until at length a kind re- 
mains upon the sieve consisting of the leaves that have not become 
rolled up, which being added to the broken particles derived from 
the winnowing operations, is called family tea, because it is consum- 
ed upon the spot. 

During, and for some time after the drying, tea exhales an herba- 
ceous and not very pleasant odor, which however becomes modified 
in the course of time. The aroma of the Chinese teas is said to be 
communicated to them by a highly odorous plant, which is believed 
to be the Oleajlagrans. It is also said that the green tea is colored 
by means of indigo ; hut it is possible that the shades of color of the 
different kinds of tea depend solely upon the degree of roasting 
which they have undergone. Guillemin has said nothing of the 
produce of the tea shrub in Brazil. In China, according to a man- 
uscript of M. Carpena, a shrub with care will produce annually 
during thirty or forty years from 2 lbs. to 2\ lbs. of marketable tea. 

From the analysis of M. Mulder, tea appears to contain : 1st. A 
volatile oil. 2d. Chlorophylle. 3d. Wax and resin. 4th. Gum. 
5th. An extractive matter. 0th. A coloring matter. 7th. Azo- 
tized substances analogous to albumen. 8th. Woody fibre and inor- 
ganic salts. 9th. A particular crystalline principle, — theine or cof- 
feine, which is ranked among the vegetable alkalies, and which is 
also met with, as implied by the name, in coffee : this new principle 
crystallizes in colorless needles of a silky aspect and bitter taste. 
It is little soluble in alcohol and in ether ; water dissolves about 
^i^i\\ of its weight, and it sublimes without undergoing decomposi- 
tion ; it is by sublimation, in fact, that Mr. Stenhouse proposes to 
obtain it from tea. 

This is undoubtedly the principle which communicates to tea its 
bitter taste, and several of its properties ; experiment has shown, 
that when administered even in considerable doses it produces no ill 
effect on the animal economy ; different kinds of tea, as might have 
been presumed, contain it in different proportions. Mr. Stenhouse 
obtained from 100 parts of 

Ilyson 1.00 ofCoffeino 

Congou l.W " 

Assam 1.37 " 

Twankay, green 0.98 " 

SEEDS. 

Wheat. This valuable grain is the produce of several kinds of 
triticum — winter wheat, and spring wheat, T. hybernnm, and T. 
astivum, spelter, T. Spclta, and T. monocon. 

Wheat is sown either upon a fallow or upon land that has carried 



WHEAT. 169' 

some forage crop, or such a crop as beans and peas. It requires A 
stiff rich soil, containing a certain proportion of calcareous earth, 
and abounding in organic matter ; it does not thrive well in soils 
\vhere the sandy element predominates over the clayey. For seed 
the best grain is selected ; but this and all other precautions do not 
suffice to preserve the plant from many diseases, such as smut, rust, 
mildew. Farmers are wont, before putting their seed wheat into 
the ground, to prepare it in various ways with a view to destroying 
the germs of certain parasites which are believed to adhere to it ex- 
ternally. The process is generally called pickling, or liming, be- 
cause milk of lime, in which the seeds are put to steep for twelve 
or fifteen hours, is often employed in its course. Means that are 
said to be more efficacious have also been recommended : some 
make use of alum, others of sulphate of iron, sulphate of zinc, sul- 
phate of copper, sulphate of soda, and even white oxide of arsenic. 
All these means appear to conduce to the same result. We employ 
sulphate of copper, which indeed is the custom in a considerable part 
of Alsace, and I can assure the reader that our fields of wheat are 
never infected. 100 grammes, or about 3} ounces troy, are allowed 
to a hectolitre or sack of nearly 3 bushels of wheat ; the salt is dis- 
solved in as much water as is held requisite for the submersion of 
the grain, which is steeped in the solution during about three quar- 
ters of an hour, after which it is thrown into baskets to drain, and 
being then spread out on the floor it is dried before being sown. 

The season at which wheat is sown in autumn ought to vary with 
the climate, and nothing can be more displaced than those precise 
dates which are set down by the majority of writers. The great 
point to be held in view is, that the young plant may have got a 
certain length before the frost sets in, that the roots may have pene- 
trated to a depth which shall protect them from the severe cold of 
the winter. In each district, experience has already proclaimed the 
proper time for sowing, and this can rarely or never be departed 
from without detriment. In the east of France, in Alsace, the sow- 
ing of winter wheat generally takes place in the first week in Octo- 
ber ; in the southern hemisphere, in certain parts of Chili, for ex- 
ample, the wheat is sown in April, and is exposed to the cold weather 
of June, July, and August. The quantity of seed sown may vary 
from about 7 pecks to 18 pecks and more per acre. Farmers gen- 
erally agree, however, that we have seed enough when we employ 
about 2 bushels to the acre ; this is the quantity which is used at 
Bechelbronn ; but in the same district, and even on contiguous fields, 
we frequently see proportions of seed employed which vary in the 
ratio of from one half to twice the quantify specified, without, so far 
as I know, any sufficient reason being given for this parsimony or 
prodigality. It is, however, a question of the very highest import- 
ance to ascertain the proper quantity of seed. The question may 
be considered in two ways : 1st. with reference to the produce of a 
given extent of surface, and 2d. with reference to the produce from 
the grain sown. It is quite certain that in sowing thick, a larger 
produce per acre will be obtained than by sowing very thin ; but on 

15 



170 WHEAT. 

the other hand, thin sowing yields a larger number of times the 
quantity of seed put into the ground. The reasons which should 
guide us in determining the dose of seed are numerous and extreme- 
ly complex ; they must evidently be taken in connection with the 
value of the ground and of cultivation, the price of wheat and of 
straw, the cost of labor and of manure. Thus in countries where 
the rent of land is extremely low it may be a good practice to scat- 
ter but a moderate quantity of seed over a large extent of surface. 
I remember a field in the neighborhood of Pampeluna, where the 
wheat was growing in isolated tufts, all extremely vigorous and very 
heavy in the ear : the ground had had but very little preparation ; 
nevertheless, they expected to gather from sixty to eighty times the 
seed. This, without doubt, was a profitable cxop ; nevertheless, I 
am satisfied that it could not have yielded more than from 6| to 7^ 
bushels per acre. 

For the same reasons the first settlers of the United States must 
have followed a somewhat similar mode of cultivation. " An English 
farmer," says Washington, in a letter addressed to Arthur Young, 
•' must have a very indifferent opinion of our soil when he hears that 
with us an acre produces no more than from 8 to 10 bushels of wheat ; 
but he must not forget that in all countries where land is cheap and 
labor is dear, the people prefer cultivating much to cultivating well." 

In Alsace we do not reckon any crop profitable which yields less 
than from 19^ to about 23 bushels per acre ; and in these circum- 
stances we do not receive back more than from 9 to 10 times the seed. 

Nevertheless, it must be allowed, even in these extreme cases in 
which the value of ground is so different, inasmuch as it may vary 
in the ratio of from 1 to 1000, that there are certain limits with ref- 
erence to the seed which must not be passed ; and there is without 
doubt an opportunity of making a series of curious and useful exper- 
iments, with the view of ascertaining the true ratios which exist 
between the produce and the seed. I am well aware that the results 
of experiments of this kind have already been made public ; but I 
know also that these data have not been deduced from a sufficient 
number of facts perfectly comparable with one another, and noted 
under a variety of climatic influences ; in a word, that they are not 
such as they ought to be, to put an end to the uncertainty which still 
exists in the minds of the best-informed farmers and rural economists 
upon the subject. 

In Europe, the wheat that is sown in autumn generally stands 
upon the ground for from nine to ten months. The time, however, 
varies considerably with the climate ; in the Andes, it is in propor- 
tion to the proper temperature of each place. 

Wheat, which is now an important article of agricultural produce 
in America, was introduced from Europe very shortly after the Con- 
quest. The first particles of wheat sown in Mexico before 1530, are 
said to have been found by a negro belonging to Fernando Cortez 
among the rice destined for provision to the army.* Wheat 

* Humboldt's Essay on New Spain, vol. ii. 



WHEAT. 171 

was brought into Quito by a Fleming-, Father Jose Rixi, a monk 
of the order of St. Francis. I was shown in the Convent of St. 
Francis, the vessel in which the first seed is said to have come from 
Europe. 

In Mexico, where the ground can be irrigated, and this, all things 
else being the same, always yields the best crops, wheat is watered 
at two different periods — when it has sprung and when it is shooting 
into ear. According to M. de Humboldt, who has collected so much 
that is interesting upon the agriculture of New Spain, the richness 
of the harvest is truly surprising ; irrigated soils often yield from 
40 to 60 times the seed ; 16 for 1 is reckoned a middling crop, and, 
taking the whole of Mexico, the mean produce may be estimated at 
from 22 to 25 for 1. 

The cultivation of wheat is especially lucrative in districts which 
enjoy a mean temperature of from 18° to 19° C, (65° to 67° F. ;) yet 
it may be pursued amid plantations of coffee-trees and sugar-canes, 
although I doubt whether it can there be extremely productive. The 
extreme limits of the growth of wheat in the Cordilleras, according 
to my own observations, correspond with the mean temperatures of 
from 12° to 23.5° C. (54 to 75° F.) M. Codazzi estimates at 37 for 
1 the mean produce of wheat in Venezuela. 

The hectolitre of wheat in France (22.009 gallons, something less 
than a sack of three bushels English) is held to weigh, on an ave- 
rage, 169.4 lbs., or 61.6, say 61^ lbs. per bushel; but this weight 
varies according to the quality of the grain between 56 and 64 lbs. 
the bushel. 

The following is a table of the mean produce of the wheat crop 
in different countries, from documents that may be relied on : 



Localities. 



Oermany : Moeglin 

Lavanthal 

Saalfelden 

Lombardy : irrigated lands 

" non-irrigated lands .... 

Average of Venetian Lombardy.... 

England: the best soils 

" average 

Brabant and Flanders 

Prance: Alsace (after tobacco) 

" " IJechelbronn 

Environs of Paris 

" Oise 

America : (East of the Alleghanics) 

" rich lands 

" middling ditto 

Mississippi: rich lands 

" middling ditto 

Venezuela (Valley of Aragua) 

" temperate regions 



Produce per 




acre (seed 


Authorities. 


deducted.) 




Bushels. 




26.7 


Thaer. 


22.0 


Burger. 


18.0 


Lurzer. 


25.6 


Burger. 


15.9 


Dandolo. 


11.0 


Verra. 


15.9 


Burger. 


34.0 


Arthur Young. 


23.0 


Arthur Young. 


25.0 


Schwertz. 


29.0 


Schwertz. 


22.3 


Lebel and Boussing. 


25.2 


Dailly. 


21.5 


Official statistics. 


-1 35.0 


1 


1 9.0 
f 44.2 


Isiodget. 


J 27.0 


J 


44.0 


Humboldt. 


14.0 


Codazzi. 



172 WHEAT. 

The cereals, besides their principal produce, their farinaceous 
seeds, yield another, which is ot" great importance in rural economy; 
this is straw, which no I'^uropean ajriicultural establishment could 
do wilhout. AfltT having been used as food and as litter lor cattle, 
it. is returned to the ground as manure, and contrii)utes powerfully 
in preventing the exhaustion of the soil, which the cultivation of 
wheat always produces. The quantity of straw which can be reck- 
oned on in a farm, is, of course, in proportion to the soil under white 
crops. The relative weight of grain and straw, however, varies 
considerably according to circumstances ; in a wet year, for instance, 
the wheat crop contains a relatively large proportion of straw, and 
a small proportion of grain; in dry years the contrary relation ob- 
tains. Lands recently and abundantly manured, yield a larger 
quantity of straw than clover breaks. Thick sowing always yields 
a large quantity in contrast with the grain ; lastly, climate exerts 
the most marked influence upon the two kinds of produce which we 
are considering. The differences which are observed between one 
year and another, in the same districts, in consequence of very dif- 
ferent meteorological conditions, are not less remarkable. I shall 
quote a single instance. The years 1840, 1841, and 1842 gave us 
crops of grain at Bechelbronn which were far from excellent ; in 
the first the rains were too abundant, and in the second the drought 
was too long continued. In these opposite circumstances, the weight 
of the straw to that of the grain was — 

111 1840-41 : : 100 : 24 
In 1841^2 : : 100 : 90 

The latter harvest, in fact, occasioned a complete dearth of litter in 
our establishment. In ordinary years we procure about 38 of grain 
for 100 of straw, a relation which agrees with those that have been 
reported by different observers, who vary in their calculations from 33 
and 35 to 41, 44, and 50 of grain to 100 parts of straw. 

In the cereals the amylaceous matter, which constitutes the princi- 
pal part of the seed, is surrounded by a flexible perisperm,of the nature 
of woody tissue. The object of grinding is to break this case and to 
reduce the interior of the grain to powder. In France, the grinding 
of wheat is performed by a succession of operations ; in England it is 
completed at once. The French mode, however, appears to yield 
the largest quantity of fine flour. 



English. French. 

Fine flour 58 J -.„ ^ ^ 7J 

Second (lour U] ^S 

Hran 26 23 

Loss 2 3 



The proportion of flour furni.shed by the cereals does not, however, 
depend alone upon the mode of grinding, but also upon the nature of 
the grain. Wheat, for instance, of different kinds, yields 78, 83, and 
85^ per cent, of flour. 

Spelter. This grain is so firmly enclosed in the husk that it can- 
not be freed by threshing ; so tiiat, in the countries where this grain 
is grown, the mills are provided with an apparatus for husking it. 



WHEAT. 173 

Schwertz made many experiments in Wurtemberg to' determine the 
quantity of flour yielded by spelter, and he found that from 100 of grain 
he obtained 90 of husked grain, and 8.7 of bran ; there was a loss of 
1.3. The quality of the flour always varies according to the wheat 
from which it is procured : it contains moisture in variable propor- 
tions, gluten in variable proportions, and, finaUy, various quantities 
of woody matter. The wheat of the south is harder and tougher than 
that of the north, and appears richer in azotized principles ; as it con- 
tains less moisture, it also keeps better ; it is, undoubtedly, in conse- 
quence of the large quantity of water which our northern wheats 
contain, that we meet with such indifferent success when we attempt 
to keep them for any length of time in our granaries. The wheat of 
Alsace, for example, frequently contains from 16 to 20 per cent, of 
moisture ; and I have ascertained, by various experiments, that it is 
almost impossible to keep it without change, in vessels hermetically 
sealed. To secure its keeping, the proportion of water must be re- 
duced to from 8 to 10 per cent., and this is nearly the quantity of 
moisture contained in the hard and horny wheat of warm countries. 
I am therefore of opinion that we shall never succeed, in these coun- 
tries, in keeping wheat for any length of time — in the magazines of 
fortified towns, for example — whatever care be taken. 

The flour of the cereals, particularly that of wheat, absorbs a large 
quantity of water, and forms a paste, which is by so much the firmer 
and more elastic, as the flour contains a larger proportion of gluten : 
the azotized principle of wheat has, in fact, the remarkable property 
of being extensible like a membrane, when it is moist, and this prop- 
erty it communicates to the whole of the paste or dough. In order 
to be brought into the state of dough fit for making bread, flour will 
absorb from 55 to 70 per cent, of water. The quantity of bread ob- 
tained necessarily depends upon the heat and length of exposure in 
the oven; but, in a general way, from 100 of flour, 130 of the best 
white bread of Paris is procured. In the country, the bread is 
generally less baked than in Paris or London, and therefore retains 
more water ; so that from 100 of flour, 140, 145, and 146 of bread are 
made : thus, admitting 16 per cent, of moisture as existing in wheat 
originally, we have of absolute dry matter 64i, 57, and 56 in different 
kinds of bread. 

Bread is by so much the more nutritious as it is made from flour 
containing a larger proportion of gluten ; to add any starch therefore 
is to prejudice the interests of the consumer; nevertheless it is the 
practice to do so almost openly ; when potato starch is at a low 
price, the adulteration frequently begins with the miller and is ex- 
tended under the baker. The quantity of gluten contained in differ- 
ent kinds of wheat varies greatly. Vauquelin found in the — 

Gluten. Scarcli. Sugar. Gum Water. Bran, 

or Jextrine. 

Flour of French wheat tl.O 

Flour from hard Odessa wheat 14.6 
Flour from soft Odessa wheat 1'2.0 
Flour from the baker's 10.2 

The method of analysis employed by Vauquelin, whose results 

15* 



71.5 


4.7 


3.3 


10.9 




5(>..5 


8.5 


4.9 


12.0 


2.3 


62.0 


7.6 


5.8 


10.0 


1.2 


-2.8 


4.2 


2.8 


10.0 





174 WHEAT. 

are given above, by means of washing, is however far from being 
very accurate ; it is impossible to prevent the loss of some gluten 
which passes with the starch, and the vegetable albumen is entirely 
lost by reason of its solubility in water : and then to dry gluten is a 
very long and delicate process ; and if we would pretend to any de- 
gree of accuracy, we must ascertain the quantity of fatty matter 
contained in the samples. I therefore thought that with reference 
to the azotized principles particularly, the better way would be by 
proceeding to ascertain these by immediate ultimate analysis. 

The four azotized principles which we have already admitted 
have very nearly the same elementary composition ; the mean propor- 
tion of azote in each is 0.16. With this datum, it is evident that if a 
particular sample of flour is found to contain 0.04 of azote, it may be 
inferred that this azote represents 0.25 of gluten, albumen, fibrine, 
and caseine, dried at 140" C. (284° F.,) and as these are the most 
valuable elements in flour, I took the pains to ascertain their pro- 
portion in a considerable number of varieties of wheat, the whole of 
which were grown in the same year, in the same soil, which was 
well manured, and under climatic influences that were identical ; nor 
did I restrict myself to the azotized matters of these samples ; I also 
endeavored to ascertain the precise relative quantities of bran and 
of flour. The following table contains the results of my experi- 
ments. 



175 



5 

o 

« 
o 
.a 

o 
9 

a 

< 


grayish, coarse. 

soft. 

very coarse. 

yellow, coarse. 

very coarse. 

yellowish, soft. 

coarse. 

very white, soft. 

yellowish, rough. 

somewhat coarse. 

white, very soft. 

yellowish, soft. 

white, very soft. 

yellowish. 

white, very soft. 

white, rather rough. 

soft, white. 

white, extremely fine. 

yellow, very coarse. 

white, very soft. 

yellowish, very soft. 

yellow, coarse. 

ditto. 

white, very soft. 


i 

o 

1 

a 


■gas 




13 . 

11 

5* 




I 

o 
1 

d 


1 


'-HC<>-ioooir5irtoooomoinicoirtin»rtooino'0 
QdaJc^aoco^wJtoioioTtadcooirHrtQdtdirjr^oicJicaJ 


B 
O 


0300CT50<MiniOOOOOirtOif5iOOLO'rtLOOOinOirt 


1 

o 

2 
a 

o 


small, thin. 

middling. 

very large. 

horny, long. 

small, brown. 

middling. 

reddish. 

yellow, fine. 

small, hard. 

hard. 

reddish. 

large. 

soft. 

pretty hard. 

soft. 

white, hard. 

ditto. 

small. 

gray, hard. 

yellow, large. 

wrinkled. 

small, red. 

hard, very large. 

well-formed. 


o 
>. 

> 


Triticum spelta rufa mutica 
Small spelter, T. monococon 

Great spelter 

Mecca wheat 

Bearded wheat 

Winter wheat, T. hybernum 
Common wheat (mouret) . . . 
Reyel wheat ....... 

Red Egyptian wheat .... 

A large wheat growing in 4 ranks 
Fine red wheat of Roussillon 

Red Marcel wheat 

Dantzic wheat 

Wheat from the North . . . 
Fine red wheat (pays de Foix) 

Smyrna wheat 

Bengal wheat 

Tangarok wheat 

Hard African wheat .... 

Cape wheat 

Russian wheat 

Sicilian wheat 

Giant St. Helena wheat . . . 
Subemac wheat (Pyrenees) . . 



176 WHEAT. 

The quantity of gluten and albumen contained in these samples o( 
flour is much larger than that usually indicated ; I have given rea- 
sons which explain, to a certain extent, this diflerence. 1 ought to 
add, however, that the varieties of wheat, the flour of which was 
analyzed, were all grown in the rich soil of the garden, a circum- 
stance which, as Hermbstadt has shown, exerts the most powerful 
influence in increasing the quantity of gluten in wheat. 

It was already known, from the experiments of Tessier, that the 
proportion of gluten in the same species of wheat might vary in the 
ratio of from 12 to 36 per cent, of the weight of the flour, according 
to the nature of the soil and the quantity of manure. But it was 
Hermbstadt who first made truly comparative observations on the 
action of the excrements of different animals on the culture of the 
cereals. 

The excrements made use of by this able cultivator in his inquiries 
were always dried in the air at a temperature of 12.7° C. (54^° F.,) 
and equal areas of the same soil were sown with equal weights of 
winter wheat, and had a similar dose of manure of one kind or an- 
other spread over them. One hundred parts of the flour obtained 
from wheat thus grown yielded : 

£ran, solul>Ie mat- 
Gluten. Siarcb. ter and moisture. 

With human nrine 35.1 39.3 25.0 

" bullock's blood 34-2 41-3 25.5 

" human excrement 33.1 41.4 25.5 

" sheep's dung 22.9 42.8 34.3 

" goat's ditto 32.9 42.4 24.7 

" horseditto 13.7 01.6 24.7 

" pigeon's ditto 12.2 03.2 24.6 

" cow's ditto 12.0 62.3 2.5.7 

Soil not manured 9.2 66.7 24-1 

It is apparent, therefore, that in general, for the exception only 
refers to the pigeon'.s and the horse dung, the wheat grown in ground 
manured with the most highly azotized matters yields the largest 
quantity of gluten. 

By way of adding to and confirming these conclusions of Plermb- 
stadt, I shall give the results of an experiment of my own, made in 
1836, in which the same variety of wheat was grown in the open 
field, and in garden ground very highly manured. The grain was 
analyzed after having been dried at 110° C, (230° F.,) and gave : 

From the open ficlU. From the garden g;rouad. 

Carbon 40.10 45.51 

Hydrogen 5.80 5.67 

Oxygen 43.40 43.00 

Azote 2.29 3.51 

Ashes 2.41 2.31 

iOOTOO 100.00 

In the produce of the garden there were 21.94 — very nearly 22 
per cent, of gluten and albumen ; in that of the open field no more 
than 14.31 per cent, of the same ])rinciples. 

Davy was of opinion that the wheat of warm climates was richer 
in azotized principles than that of temperate lands. Southern coun- 
tries are known to pruihice harder, tougher grain, the flour of which 



RYE. 177 

contains more gluten than the soft and more friable wheat of the 
north ; and the inquiries of M. Payen appear to bear out the conclu- 
sion of the illustrious English chemist. M. Payen, in fact, found in 
the hard wheat of Africa 3.00 of azote, equivalent to 18.7 ; and in 
that of Venezuela 3.50 of azote, equivalent to 21.9 of gluten and 
albumen. The experiments quoted above, however, prove that we 
may have wheat grown in Europe fully as rich in azotized elements 
as any that is grown between the tropics ; the influence of the soil 
in this direction is probably more than the influence of climate. 

In all the analyses of wheaten and other flour published up to the 
present time, we find no mention made of the fatty matters which 
they contain ; and late views in regard to the special part which 
these matters play in nutrition make it very necessary to supply the 
omission. A'ong with MM. Dumas and Payen, I therefore deter- 
mined the qujiUtity of fatty matter contained in a considerable num- 
ber of the vegetables and vegetable substances used as food, from 
which it appears that grain of different kinds contains from 2 to 10 
per cent, of oil. One hundred parts of winter wheat gathered at 
Bechelbronn lost 14.5 of water by drying at 110° C, (230° F.,) and 
therefore contained 85.5 of dry matter. 100 of this dry wheat gave 
13.7 of bran and 86.3 of flour. 

Various analyses showed the composition of this wheat and its 
parts to be as follows : 

Dry matter. Gluten and Starch. Glucose. Gum. Fatty Woody Ashes. 

Albumen. (Su^ar.) matter. tissue. 

Bran 20.0 28.8 5.5 4.5.7 

Flour 13.4 73.2 5.6 4.2 2.1 1.5 

Wheat 14.3 632 12.4 1.6 7.5 

Rye, {Secale cereale.) Rye is an important article of food, par- 
ticularly in the north of Europe, where the people live upon it almost 
entirely. It is a very hardy plant, and will thrive in soils which are 
altogether unfit to grow wheat. In the husbandry of the north this 
grain occupies the place of wheat in the south ; it requires much 
the same treatment, and stands upon the ground for nearly the same 
length of time. The bushel of rye weighs on an average about 60 lbs. 
avoird. The usual quantity of seed sown is from 10 to 11 pecks 
per acre, and the produce per acre, the seed being deducted, has 
been stated as follows : 

Bushels. 

Brabant 230 

Flanders 32.4 

Austria 20.6 

England 22.0 

France 19.0 

The German agriculturists say, that the weight of the straw to 
the weight of the rye produced is in general as 100 is to 47 ; otliers 
say as 100 is to 50, and some have taken it even as high as 100 to 
33. The relation seem.s to difl^er extremely in different years. At 
Bechelbronn, for example, in 1840-41 we had 63 of grain to 100 of 
straw ; in 1841-42 we had but 25 of grain to 100 of straw. 

Rye yields flour that is not so white nor so fine as that of wheat, 



178 BARLEY OATS. 

which is in consequence of the woody covering of the grain getting 
ground, in great part, in the mill. If but from 50 to 65 parts per 
cent, of flour be taken from rye, it is white and looks well. The 
dough made with rye flour is not very adhesive ; it contains little 
vegetable fibrine, the azotized principle which gives gluten its elas- 
tic properties. It is this want of vegetable fibrine which renders it 
more diflicult to make good light bread of rye than of wheaten flour, 
although experiment shows that rye flour of the first quality will form 
as large a proportion of bread as wheaten flour ; 100 of rye flour 
have given 145 of bread. 

Rye bread is more hygrometric than that of wheat, and conse- 
quently remains for a longer time soft and fresh. Rye generally 
contains 24 of bran to 76 of flour ; by drying at 230 F. it loses about 
17 per cent, of water. Analyses of a dried sample grown at Bechel- 
bronn yielded : 

Gluten and albumen (azotized principles united) 10.5 

*— Starcli 64.0 

Fatty matters 3.5 

, — Sugar (glucose 1) 3.0 

Gum n.O 

Woody matter and salts (phosphates) 6.0 

Loss .- 2.0 

100.0 

Barley, {Hordeum vulgare.) The usual produce of barley varies 
much from 15 or 20 to 50, 60, and even 70 bushels per acre ; the 
average for France is stated at about 43^ bushels ; and the weight 
of the bushel may be taken on an average at about 504 lbs. The 
ratio of the straw to the grain varies very much, but may be taken 
generally at that of 100 to 50. Barley contains : 

Of flour 68.6 

Bran 18.4 

Water -13.0 

100.0 

Dried, this grain gave 0.0214 of azote, which represents 13.4 per 
cent, of gluten and other azotized principles. 

Oats, {Avena saliva.) When oats yield 43 or 44 bushels per acre, 
the crop is a fair one. At Bechelbronn we have frequently had up- 
wards of 45 bushels per acre.* Schwertz states the relation between 
the straw and the grain as 100 is to 60. 

Some oats gathered in 1841-42 yielded 78 of ineal and 22 of 
husk per cent. 

One hundred parts of these oats lost by drying at 230" F., 20.8 
of water ; thus dried, analysis showed that they contained : 

Ofstarch 46.1 

" gluten, nlliumen, &c 13.7 

" fatty matter 6.7 

" sugar (glucose) 6.0 

" gum 3.8 

" woody matter, ashes, and loss 31.7 

100.0 

♦ This would be rerkonod a poor crop in the North of England and Scotland, wbero 
80, 90, and even 100 bushels of oats per acre are freciuenUy grown.— Eno. Ed 



MAIZE. 179 

Maize, {Zea mats.) This is the true wheat of the Americans, 
and it is now generally allowed that the plant is a native of the 
New World. It is also well known that maize was introduced into 
Spain long before potatoes. Oviedo states in his work, printed in 
1525, that he had seen it growing in Andalusia and the neighbor- 
hood of Madrid. The cultivation of this useful plant was observed 
everywhere on the discovery of America by Europeans, from the 
most southern parts of Chili to Pennsylvania in the north ; and in 
the neighborhood of the equator, from the level of the sea to the 
high table-lands of the Andes. Garcilasso gives a particular de- 
scription of the procedure followed by the Incas in the cultivation 
of this plant, the kind of manure, &c. At Cusco the Indians ma- 
nured with human excrement dried and reduced to powder. On the 
coasts they employed in one place guano ; in others, as the dusty and 
sterile soils of Attica, Atiquiba, &c., they made use of the offal of fish. 

The uses of maize are very numerous. In America it is made 
into cakes, which are a substitute for bread ; by fermentation a 
vinous liquor is prepared from it called chicha. Before the conquest, 
the Mexicans manufactured a sirup from the expressed juice of the 
stems. In describing to Charles V. the various articles of provision 
that were met with in the march to Tlatclolclo, Cortez says, " They 
sold us the honey of bees, wax, and honey from the stems of the 
maize plant." Maize when ground and boiled makes a kind of 
pudding in universal use, and the ear, when nearly ripe, whether 
boiled in water or roasted in the ashes, is held a luxury by all class- 
es. In the tropical Cordillera maize is advantageously cultivated 
from the level of the sea to the height of 9186 feet above it ; that is to 
say, it thrives in temperatures which vary between 14° and 27.5° C. 
(57.5° and 81.5° F. ;) this circumstance explains its very general 
introduction into Europe. 

Maize succeeds on all soils when they are properly manured : 
I have seen beautiful crops upon the most sandy soils and upon the 
stiffest clays ; it requires much the same management as our ordi- 
nary grain crops ; the climate alone should decide as to whether its 
introduction into a particular district is opportune or not ; a certain 
degree of heat is necessary to ripen it, and above all, the cold to 
which it is exposed must not be too severe. It is for this reason, 
that in the east of Europe the maize is sown in spring, when there is 
no longer any apprehension of frost ; there would be a real advan- 
tage in sowing late, were it not for fear of the frosts of autumn at 
the season of ripening. The susceptibility of maize to frost and 
climate generally, appears to me very analogous to that of the vine ; 
and I doubt whether it would be wise to attempt its cultivation on the 
great scale where the grape does not ripen in ordinary years. 

Maize is sown either with the dibble or with the hand, following 
a furrow opened by the plough ; I believe that it ought never to be 
sown broadcast, for it is a plant that requires room ; it is only in the 
hottest countries that the drill system is less necessary. In Alsace the 
drills are about 2^ feet apart, and the seeds are sown at the distance 
of about a foot from each other. This very considerable space left be- 



180 MAIZE. 

tween the maize plants appears to authorize the general custom that 
prevails of interposing some other crop in the fields under Indian 
corn ; that which is most generally interposed is either the dwarf 
haricot or the potato. I observed the same custom in the more tem- 
perate valleys of the Andes, where it is almost as necessary as in 
Europe to leave free spaces between the plants to give them air and 
sun ; but the plant is cultivated alone in the hotter regions. Soon 
after maize has sprung it receives a first hoeing, and after it has got 
to a certain height, a second ; in Alsace, for instance, it is custom- 
ary to hoc towards the end of June ; but I never saw any operation 
of the kind performed between the tropics : the only care they 
seemed to take of their fields of Indian corn, was to pull up foul weeds. 
In Europe it is usual to take away the sprouts which rise beside the 
principal stem ; this precaution is also unnecessary in equatorial 
countries where the ground is fertile ; the more lateral stems that 
rise, the better, as they all become richly laden with grain. I may 
also say as much for the system of topping which prevails among us, 
that system which consists in removing the extremity of the stem 
which bears the male liowers after the fecundation has been effected. 
The leaves and heads of stems which are obtained by this operation, 
compose a forage by no means to be despised. 

The time during which the crop of maize remains on the ground, 
is greatly influenced by the mean temperature of the climate ; in hot 
intertropical countries, the grain ripens in less than three months, 
and there are even farms upon which four considerable crops are 
gathered in the course of the year. On the temperate plateau or 
table-land of I3ogota, the plant ripens in six months ; in Alsace about 
the same length of time is required, although at Bechelbronn, in 1836, 
the maize which was sown on the 1st of June was gathered ripe on 
the 1st of October. Maize is dried either in exposing the spikes 
stripped of their covering upon the floor of a well-ventilated gra- 
nary, or by hanging them up in bunches or sheaves under sheds, or 
under the eaves of the house. In warm countries the drying is 
accomplished by one or two days' exposure to the sun, after which 
the spikes are stored. The maize is freed from the stem with the hand 
in small farms, with the flail in larger establishments. In America 
the operation is never done until the moment when the grain is want- 
ed, as it is said that tlie grain is less subject to be attacked by 
insects v/hen it is kept in the ear. When animals are fed on maize, 
they are accustomed to separate it for themselves. 

The produce in Indian corn varies greatly, as appears by the fol- 
lowing table, in different countries : 

Countries. ProJuce in bushels 

per acre. 

I.avanthal 81 

Curintliiii 55 

Austria and Moravia 24 

Hungary and Croatia 42 

Tuscany 96 

France (climate of Paris) 29 

Alsace 43 

Venezuela 147 



MAIZE. 181 

By far the finest crops of Indian corn in America are obtained upon 
breaks of virgin soil. I do not hesitate to say that the husbandman 
gains from six hundred to seven hundred times his seed under such 
circumstances. The mode of proceeding upon these breaks, which 
I have frequently witnessed, deserves to fix attention for a moment. 

The planter chooses the end of the rainy season for cutting down 
the trees and the brushwood : every thing remains where it falls 
until it is sufficiently dry ; fire is then set to the heap, and the burn- 
ing extends and lasts even for weeks ; all the smaller branches are 
completely consumed, nothing but the charred trunks of the larger 
trees remain. As the rainy season is about to return, a man, with 
a pointed stick in his hand, goes over the burnt surface, making a 
hole of no great depth at intervals, into which he throws two or 
three particles of Indian corn, over which he draws a little earth, or 
rather ashes, by a slight motion of his foot. This primitive mode 
of sowing terminated, the planter takes no further heed of the crop ; 
his habitation is often so remote, that he never visits it until harvest 
time : the rain and the climate do all the work. It is unnecessary 
to hoe, the burning having destroyed all the plants that were indi- 
genous to the soil ; nothing rises but the grain which has been sown. 
In such fields, stems of Indian corn are frequently seen of the height 
of from twelve to fourteen feet. It rarely happens that more than 
three consecutive crops are taken from the burnt soil ; and the last, 
though still very superior to any thing which we can obtain by our 
regular husbandry, is not to compare with the first. As there is no 
want of forest, it is held preferable to make a fresh break. 

Taking the seed as unity, it is found, from documents now pos- 
sessed, that 1 of seed will yield — in Mexico (an indifferent harvest) 
150 ; in New California (beyond the tropics) 80 ; Alsace (the plants 
very far apart) 190 ; Venezuela (an ordinary crop) 238. Besides 
the grain and the straw, the husks and the cores of Indian corn are 
all extremely valuable upon the farm as forage, and as affording 
manure. 

Maize has been analyzed by M. Payen, and found to contain : 
starch 71.2 ; gluten, albumen, &c., 12.3 ; fat, oil, 9.0 ; dextrine and 
glucose 0.4; woody tissue 5.9; and salts 1.2; 100.0. I found 
0.02 of azote in a sample of dry maize, which I analyzed, a quantity 
which indicates 12.5 of gluten and albumen, a result that coincides 
exactly with M. Payen's analysis. 

Rice, {Oriza sativa.) Rice is an aquatic plant which can only 
be grown in low moist lands that are easily inundated. The ground 
is ploughed or stirred superficially, and divided into squares of from 
twenty to thirty yards in the sides, separated from each other by 
dikes of earth, about two feet in height, and sufficiently broad for a 
man to walk upon. These dikes are for retaining the water when 
it is required, and to permit of its being drawn off" when the inunda- 
tion is no longer necessary. The ground prepared, the water is let 
on, and kept at a certain height in the several compartments of the 
rice-field, and the seedsman goes to work. The rice that is to be 
used as seed must have been kept in the husk ; it is put into a sack, 

16 



182 COFFEE. 

which is immersed in water, until the grain swells and shows signs 
of germination ; the seedsman walking through the inundated ftald, 
scatters the seed with his hand as usual, the rice immediately sinks 
to the bottom, and may even penetrate to a certain depth into the 
mud. In Piedmont, where the sowing takes place at the beginning 
of April, they generally use about fifty-five pounds of seed per acre. 
The rice begins to show itself above the surface of the water at the 
end of a fortnight ; as the plant grows, the depth of the water is in- 
creased, so that the stalks may not bend with their own weight. 
About the middle of June this disposition is no longer to be appre- 
hended ; the rice is no longer so flexible as it was, so that the water 
can be drawn off for a few days to permit hoeing, after which the 
water is let on and maintained to the height of the plant ; in July it 
is usual to top the stalks, an operation which renders the flowering 
almost simultaneous. Rice generally flowers in the beginning of the 
month of August, and a fortnight later the grain begins to form. 
It is at this period especially that the stalks require to be supported, 
and this is effectually done by keeping the water at about half their 
height. The rice-field is emptied when the straw turns yellow. 
The harvest generally takes place at the end of September. In the 
Isle of France, rice is cultivated in very damp soils, upon which a 
great deal of rain falls, but which are not flooded artificially. I 
have seen the same process followed in other tropical countries 
which I have visited, but I do not think that the produce is so great, 
or the crop so certain, as where inundation is employed. In Pied- 
mont, the usual return from a rice-field is reckoned at about 50 for 1 
of seed. At Muzo, in New Granada, the paddy fields, which are 
not inundated, under the influence of a mean temperature of 26° cent. 
(79" Fahr.) yield 100 for 1. 

Three kinds of rice yielded, on analysis, the following quantities 
of— 

Carolin-i. Piedmont. Rice. 

Starch 89.5 90.1 86.9 

Gluten.'albumen, &c 3.8 3.9 7.5 

Fatty matters 0.2 0.3 0.8 

Sugar (glucose 7) 0.3 0.1) „? 

Gum 0.7 0.1$ "•' 

Woody tissue 5.1 5.1 3.4 

Phosphate of lime 0.4 0.4 > «« 

Chloride of potassium, phosphate of ditto, &c. J 

100.0 100 100.0 



M. Payen's analysis indicates a proportion of azote, the double of 
that found by M. Braconnot. In a trial for azote, which I made 
myself, I found 1.2 of this element per cent., which would show the 
amount of albumen and gluten to be 7.5, a quantity that corresponds 
exactly with M. Payen's valuation. 

Coffee, (Coffea Arahica.) The habit of using the infusion of 
coffee appears to have been introduced into Europe about the middle 
of the sixteenth century. The fir.st public establishments for the sale 
of the drink were opened in Constantitiopic, in the year 1554. The 
use of coffee remained for a long time confined to the East ; but by 



COFFEE. 183 

degrees it spread, and at the present day the consumption of the article 
in Europe exceeds 660,000,000 of pounds annually. The greater 
portion of coffee consumed in Europe is the produce of America, and 
yet it is not more than a century since it was first grown in the New 
World. 

The coffee-plant thrives between the tropics in situations where the 
mean and nearly constant temperature is between 22° and 26° C, 
(71.5° and 80° F.) 

Coffee is rarely sown in a nursery ; the seeds are made to germinate 
still surrounded by their natural pulp, and wrapped up in leaves of the 
banana. The young plants, after seven or eight days of germina- 
tion, are put into the ground. In the valley d'Aragua an acre of 
ground of good quality is generally laid out with about 1040 plants. 
The coffee-plant flourishes in the course of the second year ; when 
left to grow unimpeded it will attain a height of from 23 to 26 feet, 
but it is seldom allowed to grow so high, its upward progress being 
checked by pruning ; the planters of Venezuela generally keep it at 
a height of from five to six feet. The shrub receives the care of 
the planter during the first two years ; the ground must be kept free 
from weeds, and the growth of parasites must above all be prevented. 
To thrive, the coffee-plant requires frequent rains up to the time of 
flowering. The fruit bears a strong resemblance to a small cherry, 
and is ripe when it becomes of a red color, and the pulp is soft and 
very sweet. As the berries never ripen simultaneously, the coffee 
harvest takes place at different times, each requiring at least three 
visits made at intervals of from five to six days. A negro will 
gather from ten to twelve gallons of fruit in the course of a day. 

Two beans are found in the interior of each berry ; in order to 
free these from the pulp which surrounds them, they are passed 
through a kind of mill, and the coffee is steeped in water for twenty- 
four hours in order to free it from the mucilaginous matter which 
adheres to it ; it is then dried by being spread out upon a floor under 
a shed* In the coffee plantations of Venezuela which I visited, I 
saw them proceed in another way. The berries were exposed to 
the sun upon a piece of ground somewhat inclined, and spread out 
to about three inches in thickness ; the pulp soon enters into fer- 
mentation, and a very distinct vinous odor is exhaled, and the juice 
altered either flows away or dries up ; at the end of a fortnight or 
three weeks the berries are all dry and shrivelled, and they then 
undergo two triturations, one to obtain the seeds or beans, the 
other to detach a thin pellicle which surrounds them. Three bush- 
els of berries will yield from 85 to 90 lbs. of marketable coffee. 

During the destruction of the sugary matter contained in the pulp 
of the berry, a considerable quantity of spirit is produced and dissi- 
pated. M. Humboldt, struck with the readiness with which the 
berry of the coffee-plant runs into fermentation, expresses his sur- 
prise that no one ever thought of obtaining alcohol from it. In an 
old work, however, I find the following passage : " The inhabitants 
of Arabia take the skin which surrounds the coffee bean and prepare 
it as we do raisins ; they form a drink with it for refreshment during 



184 COCOA. 

the summer."* This vinous liquor appears to enjoy all the exciting 
properties which are esteemed in the infusion of coffee. 

The coffee-plant continues to produce to the age of forty to forty- 
five years ; it bears to a considerable extent even in the third year. 
Some shrubs yield from 17 to 22 lbs. of dry coffee beans ; but this 
is a very large quantity. An acre of land in the valley d'Aragua, 
planted with about 1040 shrubs, will yield about 940 or 950 lbs., 
which is at the rate of somewhat less than 1 lb. per shrub. 

Coffee contains the same active principle as tea, coffeine, but in 
less proportion ; the researches of different chemists have also 
shown the presence of a particular acid called coffeic acid, of fatty 
matters, a volatile oil, a coloring matter, albumen, tannin, and alka- 
line and earthy salts. 

Cocoa, {Theobroma cacao.) The ancient Mexicans cultivated the 
cocoa-tree, and with its seeds prepared tablets similar to the choco- 
late of modern times. The use of cocoa appears to have been in- 
troduced after the conquest into the other parts of the continent ; 
nevertheless, the cocoa-tree is indigenous in the hot and humid 
forests of South America. M. Goudot discovered several species in 
New Granada ; among others, that which is known at Muso under 
the name of the Cacao montaraz : this cocoa-tree, which attains a 
height of from 25 to 30 feet, yields a considerable quantity of fruit ; 
the natives prepare a chocolate from its beans, which is extremely 
bitter, and which they regard as an excellent febrifuge. The wild 
Indians still appear to be ignorant of the profit that may be made of 
the seeds of the cocoa-tree ; they only eat the pulp of fruit which 
surrounds them. Cocoa was introduced into Europe by the Span- 
iards, and in no long space of time this production of the New 
World became the object of a very considerable traffic. 

It is a fact well known to the husbandmen of tropical countries, 
that a virgin soil is quite indispensable to the success of a cocoa 
plantation ; nothing but failure has followed attempts to replace the 
sugar-cane, indigo, maize, &c.,with cocoa, a plant which to succeed 
requires a rich, deep, and moist soil, heat and shade ; nothing suits 
it better than a forest brake, the surface of which is susceptible of 
irrigation. 

AH the important cocoa plantations which I visited had a common 
physiognomy : they were all situated in the hottest regions, at a 
short distance from the sea, near torrents, or on the banks of great 
rivers. The cocoa husbandry ceases to be profitable in localities 
which have not a mean temperature of at least 24" C, (75.2° Fahr.,) 
and 1 have had occasion to take part in attempts that were as fruit- 
less as expensive to cultivate the cocoa-tree in a brake where the 
heat of the climate from my own observations did not exceed 22.8° 
C. (73° Fahr.) Under the influence of this temperature, the trees 
presented a very good appearance ; in the course of a few years 
they flowered, but the fruit, which was always small, rarely came to 
maturity. When a piece of land has been selected for a cocoa 

* Mem. of the Acaticiiiy of Inscripliuns, vol. xxiU:. p. "14. 



COCOA. 185 

plantation, they begin by establishing a good system of shade. Oc- 
casionally a certain number of trees, with large and leafy crowns, 
are left standing ; but in general certain plants, which grow rapidly, 
are had recourse to as a means of procuring shade. In the neigh- 
borhood of Caraccas they shade with the erythrina umbrosa ; and 
in some plantations they take advantage of the shade of the ba- 
nana ; finally, the two modes of procuring shade are frequently con- 
joined. 

In the province of Guayaquil they plant the beans of the cocoa 
directly. In Venezuela they prefer raising the plant in a nursery, 
which is always selected of the most fertile soil, and deeply trenched. 
The seeds are sown immediately before the setting in of the rains, 
and germination takes place in from eight to ten days. In a good 
soil, at two years of age the cocoa-plant will have attained a height 
of nearly 3 feet ; it is then pruned by having two of its upper branch- 
es removed, and is transplanted. In the upper valley of the Rio 
Magdalena, where there are many valuable cocoa-groves, the sow- 
ing is performed in ground well prepared and protected by screens 
made with palm leaves ; here the young cocoas are transplanted 
when they are six months old. During the whole of the time that 
the plants remain in this nursery they continue to be well shaded ; 
and they are watered once a week by water poured upon the 
screens. 

The tree seldom comes into flower under thirty months old. I 
have known planters who always destroyed these first flowers, and 
who never suffered any fruit to ripen before the fourth year, and 
that too under the most favorable circumstances in regard to climate, 
in situations where the mean temperature was 27.5° C., between 81° 
and 82° Fahr. In less favorable situations it is necessary to wait 
six or seven years before gathering the first fruits of a cocoa planta- 
tion. There are few arborescent plants which have so small a flower, 
and especially a flower so disproportionate to the size of its fruit, as 
the cocoa-tree. The diameter of a bud, measured at the moment of 
its expansion, does not exceed 4 millimetres — 0.157 of an English 
inch. The flowers appear principally upon the trunk of the tree 
itself; they rarely show themselves beyond the middle of the larger 
branches ; occasionally they appear upon the roots which happen to 
be above the ground. 

To receive the young plants grown in the nursery, the ground 
properly shaded is first freed from weeds. Trenches are then cut, 
either to season the ground or to irrigate it when requisite. The 
young plants are set in rows at regular and considerable distances, 
which vary, however, with the quality of the soil ; and the general 
opinion is, that the better the soil the greater should be the space 
from trer; to tree. Thus in the valley of del Tuy, in the neighbor- 
hood of Puerto Cabello, the cocoa-trees are set at the distance of 
about IB feet apart in the best soils, and at the distance of about 13 
feet only in soils of inferior quality. In the windward islands, where 
the soil is generally less fertile than on the continent, the trees 
stand at the distance of from 6 or 7 to 9 or 10 feet apart. A reason 

16* 



186 COCOA. 

for this practice may be readily assigned ; in the more fertile soils 
the trees grow more vigorously, the branches spread further, and 
consequently require a larger space. 

Once the cocoa-tree is in the plantation, it is regularly pruned to 
prevent its branches becoming too numerous. It sometimes happens 
that the branches show a tendency to bend down towards the ground, 
in which case they are fastened up around the trunk, until they 
acquire strength and a better direction. The soil around the trunk 
is hoed from time to time to the extent of about a yard in circum- 
ference, and the capillary roots, which spring from the base of the 
trunk, are removed in the course of the operation. 

From the fall of the flower to the complete ripeness of the fruit 
there elapses an interval of four months. The fruit is of an elon- 
gated form, slightly bent, and terminated in a point ; its length is 
about 9 inches, and its greatest diameter, which is near the point of 
attachment, is from 6 to 7 inches. Externally, the cocoa-nut pod 
is furrowed longitudinally. Its color varies from a greenish white 
to a reddish violet, the latter being the more common tint. Internal- 
ly the flesh of the fruit is generally white, although it has sometimes 
a rose-color ; it is sweet and acid, and of a very agreeable flavor. 
The seeds are generally twenty-five in number in each fruit, and at 
first are white ; they are oleaginous and slightly bitter ; in drying 
they acquire a brown tint. The fruit is known to be ripe by its 
color, and particularly by the ease with which it is gathered from 
the tree. There are two grand cocoa harvests in the course of the 
year, at six months' interval ; still, in old and large plantations the 
harvest is almost incessant, as it is not uncommon to observe, on the 
same cocoa-tree, ripe fruits and fresh flowers. To obtain the seeds 
the fruit is opened with a piece of wood, having a rounded extremity. 
The produce is classed according to its quality, care being taken to 
throw out all the beans that are not sufficiently ripe or that are 
damaged ; they are then exposed in the sun. Every evening the 
day's gathering is collected into a heap under a shed, and a brisk 
fermentation is soon set up, which would become destructive were it 
suffered to continue. Next day the heap is scattered, and the drying 
goes on in the sun, several days' exposure being required before the 
drying is complete. Occasionally the drying is retarded and ren- 
dered difl[icult by the occurrence of rain, and there would certainly 
be many advantages in effecting it by the stove. It has been found 
that 100 lbs. of fresh beans give from 45 to 50 lbs. of dry and mar- 
ketable cocoa. In Venezuela, a cocoa-tree which is over seven or 
eight years old, will yield annually for more than forty years over 
H lb. (1.65 lb.) of dry and marketable cocoa. An acre of ground, 
which in good plantations will be set with about two hundred and 
thirty-three trees, produces in a middling year about 383 lbs. weight. 
The cocoa-tree appears to yield most abundantly when it is about 
twelve years of age, and its produce in the fertile lands of Upper 
Magdalena, according to M. Goudot, is greatly superior to what it 
is in Venezuela. At Gigante, for example, each adult tree yields 



PEAS, BEANS, ETC. 



187 



4.4 lbs. of dry cocoa annually, and the produce of an acre there may 
be estimated at 733 lbs. 

Cocoa beans contain albumen, a particular principle, theobromine, 
analogous to coifeine, a coloring matter, and a large quantity of oil or 
fat, which, from experiments made in my laboratory, appears to 
amount to 43 per cent. The presence of a large quantity of albu- 
men and fatty matter in cocoa explains its highly nutritious qualities. 
It is indeed one of the most wholesome and restorative articles of 
sustenance known. Nevertheless, very opposite statements have 
been made upon the virtues of cocoa or chocolate, of which the bean 
forms the basis. Benzoni, in his History ot the New World, de- 
clared chocolate to be a drink that was fitter for hogs than men ; 
and Father Acosta declares the taste for cocoa to be unreasonable. 
On the other hand, Fernando Cortez and one of his gentlemen fol- 
lowers are perhaps guilty of exaggeration when they say, " that he 
who has taken a cup of chocolate may march the rest of the day 
without other aliment !"* Without going the whole of this length 
with Cortez, I still allow that chocolate is one of the best articles 
for travelling upon, especially in the uninhabited forests of South 
America, where it is a matter of the highest moment to have the 
bulk and the weight of necessary rations as small as possible. 

Seeds of leguminous plants. The leguminous plants that are cul- 
tivated as food for man are beans, peas, haricots, and lentils ; vetches 
are grown exclusively for the use of cattle. 

Leguminous plants scarcely ever open rotations ; but they very 
often wind them up. Speaking generally, however, they may follow 
any crop. In speaking of the Indian corn, I have said that haricots 
and beans might be advantageously intercalated. 

The meteorological observations I have made in different coun- 
tries lead me to conclude that to succeed, leguminous plants require 
a temperature which in the mean does not fall below from 14° to 15" 
C, (57° to 59° F.) Hot climates agree with them perfectly ; I have 
followed them from the sea-board of the equatorial Andes to a height 
of from 8200 to 9800 feet above the level of the sea. Schwertz has 
given the following statement of the produce of the different legu- 
minous plants generally cultivated : 



Plants. 


Weight per 


Produce per acre 


Weight of dry straw 


bushel in lbs. 


in bushels. 


or haulm per acre. 








Tons. Cvvts. qrs. lbs. 


Haricots 


47.5 


66.7 




Beans . . 


65.5 


66.2 


2 2 2 17 


Peas . . 


57.9 


38.5 


2 4 2 11 


Lentils . . 


62.3 


39.8 




Vetches . . 


. 1 62.3 


41.2 


2 4 2 11 



The analyses we have of leguminous vegetables show the follow- 
ing proportion of elements : 



* Hmuboldt, Travels, vol. v. p. 285. 



188 



THE HOP. 





Haricots. 


Peas. 


Lentils. 


Leguniine 


22.0 


20.4 


22.0 


Starch .... 


41.0 


47.0 


40.0 


Fatty matters 


3.0 


2.0 


2.5 


Sugar (glucose ?) . 


0.3 


2.0 


1.5 


Gum .... 


4.0 


5.0 


7.0 


Woody fibre, pcctic acid 


8.0 


11.0 


12.0 


Salts, phosphates, &c. 


3.2 


3.0 


2.5 


Water and loss 


17.5 


9.6 


12.5 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 



Besides these principles, a quantity of tannin has always been 
found in the skin of the seed of all leguminous plants. 

The Hop, {Hwnulus hipulus.) From its very general use in 
making beer, the hop has become an object of great importance, 
both in an agricultural and commercial point of view. 

The hop may be cultivated in any soil that is of sufficient depth 
and fertility ; it thrives especially in rich and turfy loams, such as 
those of Haguenau, where there are many beautiful hop-gardens. 
The plant is propagated in the spring by setting the sprouts or radicu- 
lar buds in ground trenched to the depth of 18 inches at least, at in- 
tervals of about a couple of yards from one another. Within a few 
weeks the young hop-plant is growing lustily ; and as it is a climber, 
it is trained upon a pole of from 12 to 20 feet in height. The ground 
is usually hoed towards the end of June. The first crop from a new 
plantation is always trifling in amount ; the ground is then manured. 
The following spring all the eyes or buds that have become devel- 
oped near the root are removed, except six or seven, which are left 
to shoot. The hop harvest generally occurs about the middle of 
September : the poles are pulled up, the stems are cut, and the 
strobiles are picked off into baskets by hand, and immediately car- 
ried to the stove or kiln, where they are dried with a very gentle 
heat, in order not to dissipate their fine aromatic particles. 

A hop-garden produces very variously in different countries and 
districts, and in different years. The produce of an acre in hop? 
has been stated to be : 

In Flanders, 13 cwt. 

Germany (mean of 10 years,) . . 10 " 

France (near Paris,) . . . 10 " 

" (Roville, mean of 10 years,) 1\ " 

[England, from 9 to 10, and from 12 to 14 cwt.] 

The strobiles of the hop are covered with a yellow pulverulen* 
substance, which has been held to furnish in principal part the ex 
tractive matter that is so valuable in brewing. To procure this sub 
stance it is enough to sift a quantity of hops after they have been 
dried by a gentle heat. This yellow powder, which appears to be 
the useful principle in the hop, and consequently gives it its value 



BANANA. 180 

is not found in the same proportion in the produce of all hop-gardens. 
This clearly appears from the inquiries of Messrs. Payen and Cheva- 
lier. They found, for example, that while 100 parts of the hops of 
Belgium contained 18 of yellow substance and 70 of mere leaf, 
those of England contained no more than 10 of yellow matter and 
87 of leaf, and those of Germany the still smaller quantity of 8 of 
yellow matter to 88 of leaf. This yellow pulverulent matter con- 
tains wax, resin, gum, a bitter principle, certain azotized principles, 
a volatile oil, and salts, among others acetate of ammonia. 



FLESHY OR PULPY FRUITS. 

The fleshy fruits almost all contain the same principles, but in 
very different proportions. It is consequently the predominating 
principle which in some sort characterizes each variety, that gives 
it its flavor, odor, &c. : sugar, albumen, gum, starch, acids, fixed 
oils, essential oils, woody fibre, are almost invariably found secreted 
in their pulps, with a larger or smaller quantity of water. An in- 
genious classification of fruits has been formed on the basis of the 
predominance of the different substances which have just been enu- 
merated : thus those fruits in which the starchy principle predomi- 
nates are feculent or amylaceous fruits ; those in which the sugar 
predominates are saccharine fruits, and so on. 

M. Berard has analyzed a great number of fruits in the course of 
his researches on their ripening.* It is proper to say, however, that 
some of the principles brought to .light by modern analysis do not 
figure in M. Berard's list of elements ; among the number, pectic 
acid, gallic acid, small quantities of volatile oils, and of salts of 
potash formed by vegetable acids. 













a . 






^ 


CD 


a 


(U 


&| 






o 


Si 


e 


*C 


C 3 


. 




•c 


i 


H 




Sjo. 


>2 




P. 






J3 






Albumen and gluten 


< 


s, 


O 


O 


o 


^ 


0.2 


0.9 


0.9 


0.6 


0.3 


0.2 


Coloring matter 


0.1 








0.1 




Vegetable tissue 


1.9 


1.2 


8.0 


1.1 


1.1 


2.2 


Gum 


5.1 


4.9 


0.8 


3.2 


2.1 


2.1 


Sugar 


16.5 


11.6 


6.0 


18.1 


24.8 


11.5 


Malic acid 


1.80 


1.1 


2.4 


2.0 


0.6 


0.1 


Citric acid 


C( 




0.3 






(( 


Lime 




0.1 


0.3 


0.1 






Water 


74.4 


80.2 


81.3 


74.9 


71-0 


83.9 


100.00 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 



Banana. Of all the pulpy fruits, the banana is that perhaps which 
is most extensively used as food by man. It is the usual nourish- 

* Ann. de Chimie, t. xvi. p. 225, 2d sories 



190 BANANA. 

ment of the inhabitants of most of the countries between the tropics, 
where its cultivation is as important as that of the cereals and fari- 
naceous roots in the temperate zone. The ease with which it is cul- 
tivated, the small space of ground it occupies, the certainty, the 
abundance, and the continuance of its produce, the diversity of food 
it yields according to the degree of maturity, make the banana an 
object of admiration to the European traveller. In climates where 
man scarcely feels the necessity of clothing himself, or of raising a 
shed for his protection, he is seen gathering almost without labor 
supplies of food as abundant as they are wholesome and varied from 
the banana-tree. It is the banana which has given rise to that prov- 
erb so consoling and so true, which is frequently heard between the 
tropics, viz. " No one dies of hunger in America ;" he who is hun- 
gry will be welcomed and fed in the very poorest cabin. Botanists 
distinguish three principal varieties of the banana: 1st. the Musa 
paradisica ; 2d. the Musa sapientium ; 3d. the Musa regia. 

The American origin of the banana has been called in question. 
Oviedo in his natural history of the Indies affirms that it was brought 
from the Canary Isles to St. Domingo by a monk. Foster adopted 
this opinion, which is corroborated, says M. de Humboldt, by the 
complete silence of the first travellers who visited the New World 
in regard to it. Nevertheless, the testimony of the Inca Garcilasso de 
la Vega proves obviously that the banana flourished in America be- 
fore the arrival of the Spaniards ; in his royal commentaries he 
speaks of the banana as constituting the chief food of the Indians in 
the warmest parts of Peru. 

The banana is everywhere cultivated in the neighborhood of the 
equator, in situations at no great height above the level of the sea. 
The cultivation is most profitable, the crop is most abundant, and at- 
tains maturity in the shortest space of time in low lying districts 
where the mean temperature is from 24° to 27.5° C, (75.5° to 82° 
F.) Some estimate may be formed of this from the low price of the 
banana in such districts ; upon the borders of the great river de la 
Magdalena, I gave one franc or about lOd. for about 220 lbs. weight 
of the fruit. The day's wages of a man being generally about Is. 8d., 
it is beyond all doubt the cheapest food that can be had in the world. 

In looking at the cultivation of the banana at different heights in 
the e(iuatorial Cordilleras, I arrived at the following conclusions : 

Temperature 28° C. (between 82° and 83° F.) the cultivation ex- 
tremely advantageous ; at 24° C. (between 75° and 76° F.) the cul- 
tivation advantageous ; at 22° (71° and 72° F.) the cultivation mid- 
dling ; at 19° C. (or between 66° and 67° F.) the cultivation disad- 
vantageous. 

Tiie banana is propagated by means of suckers or offsets. It re- 
quires a rich and humid but well-drained soil, the plantation being 
arranged a little before the setting in of the rains. The earth is 
freed from weeds, and dug cither entirely or more generally only at 
regular distances here and there, where it is proposed to set the new 
plant, a space of 6 feet at least being left between each. The plant 
throws up several shoots, generally 6 or 7, each of which will be al- 



BANANA. 191 

lowed to grow and to carry fruit ; when a greater number make their 
appearance, some of them are cut away. The time which passes be- 
tween planting the slip and gathering the fruit varies according to 
the situation ; in the hottest districts near the level of the sea the 
banana comes into flower about nine months after it has been plant- 
•ed ; and in three months more the fruit has formed and become ripe. 
In cold situations an interval of four months will elapse between the 
flowering and the ripening of the fruit. The care required by a ba- 
nana plantation is not very great, the principal duty being to hoe 
around the young plants. As the banana is renewed by stems which 
arise continually from the neck of the root, it is easily understood 
■that the plant will go on yielding fruit for an indefinite length of 
time ; when the fructification is complete in one stem, the leaves, 
&c., wither and fall, and give place to a new stem. It is thus that 
the gatherings from the banana go on successively at short intervals, 
and that the same plant presents at one and the same moment fruit 
that is ripe, fruit that is half ripe, fruit that is beginning to be formed, 
flowers, and finally young stems, which are rising as preparations for 
the future. Thus no crop is more assuring to the planter than the 
banana. Climatic circumstances may sometimes delay, but can never 
destroy the hopes of the husbandman. The extraordinary droughts 
which under the burning climates of the equator so frequently interrupt 
or destroy ordinary herbaceous plants, rarely exert any pernicious 
influence upon the banana plantation, the thick shade of which pre- 
sents a constant obstacle to the evaporation of moisture. During 
the dry season, when for whole months the heavens preserve their 
purity, and no drop of rain falls to refresh the earth, the soil which 
surrounds the banana still continues moist. It looks every morning 
as if it had been watered during the night ; this salutary effect is 
produced by the nocturnal radiation of the leaves into the clear sky. 
These leaves, whose extent of surface is considerable, always fall 
several degrees below the temperature of the surrounding air, and 
thus condense the watery vapor contained in the atmosphere, which 
drips down to the foot of the plant. 

The produce of a banana plantation depends first upon the dis- 
tance at which the bananas are placed, and next upon the climate. 
It is generally estimated in the very warm climates, that a crop of 
bananas will weigh about 44 lbs., and that from an adult plant three 
crops will be obtained in the course of a year. In temperate coun- 
tries, and towards the superior limits of the banana plant, they do 
not reckon on more than two crops. According to M. de Humboldt, 
the produce per acre, in hot countries where the mean temperature 
is about 82° Fahr., will amount to 75 tons, 8 cwt. 1 qr. 17 lbs. ; at 
Cauca, where the temperature is about 79° Fahr., the produce amounts 
to 61 tons, 8 cwt. qr. 2 lbs. ; at Ibague, where the temperature is 
not higher than about 72°, the produce, according to M. Goudot's es- 
timate, is 26 tons, 17 cwt. 3 qrs. 2 lbs. The pulp of the banana is 
surrounded by a pod or husk of some thickness, which is easily de- 
tached, and of which account must be taken if we would estimate 
the actual weight of the truly alimentary matter afforded. In a 



192 BANANA. 

general way, and when the banana is ripe, the shell may be estimated 

at about 36.8, the edible banana at 73.2 per cent. 

The Miisa paradisica is the variety of banana generally culti- 
vated, and it also yields the heaviest crops. The fruit of the other 
two varieties mentioned is much smaller ; but it is of a much more 
delicate flavor. The ripe fruit of the banana is of the consistence 
of a pear ; it is very sweet, and slightly acid. In the common va- 
riety, I found crystallizable sugar, gum, an acid, (probably the rnalic,) 
gallic acid, albumen, pectic acid, woody fibre, and alkaline and earthy 
salts. Dried in the sun, 1000 parts of ripe banana were reduced to 
439 parts ; so that they contained 561 parts of water. The green 
or unripe banana has a white and almost insipid flesh. In this state 
it scarcely contains any sugar ; it is starch that predominates. In 
this state, therefore, it is made a substitute for bread, for the potato, 
or Indian corn ; it may be considered a farinaceous vegetable. 
After having removed the rind, the banana is dressed by being 
roasted under the ashes until the outer part is slightly brown ; it is 
then served up at table, and constitutes a kind of soft bread, very 
agreeable to the palate, and greatly preferable, in my opinion, to the 
produce so much vaunted of the bread-fruit tree. In the expeditions 
which are undertaken into the forest, and when the habitations of 
man are to be quitted for some considerable time, the green banana 
is always made a principal part of the provision ; but then it is pre- 
viously dried, first to lessen its weight, and then to destroy its vi- 
tality so far as to prevent its ripening. This drying is performed in a 
baker's oven, into which the green bananas, stripped of their husks, 
are introduced, and where they are kept for about eight hours. On 
being taken out, the bananas are hard, brittle, translucent, and pre- 
sent the appearance of horn ; 100 lbs. of the green fruit give but 40 
of dry substance. The banana thus prepared is called j?/?, and will 
keep for a great length of time without change. To prepare it for 
food, it is put to steep in water, and then boiled ; by adding a little 
salted meat, a very substantial and nutritious meal is prepared. I 
once made a voyage on the Pacific, in a vessel which was princi- 
pally victualled with dried bananas, which were served out to the 
company like biscuit. 

When ripe, the banana is no longer farinaceous ; as it ripens, its 
starch is changed into gum and sugar, and an acid is developed. 
But between the farinaceous and the sugary or perfectly ripe state, 
tltere is one intermediate, in which it is generally eaten. Roasted in 
the ashes, the banana has then a taste which brings to mind that of 
the chestnut ; it is also eaten as a vegetable, boiled in the usual way 
in water. Completely ripe, the fruit is eaten raw or dressed, it is 
then extremely sweet ; a very common practice is to fry it, cut in 
slices, in grease. 

I have no data upon which to estimate the nutritive value of the 
banana, still I have reasons for believing that it is more nutritious 
than the potato. I have seen men do a great deal of hard labor upon 
an allowance of about 6.t pounds of half-ripe bananas, and two ounces 
of salted meated per diem. 



193 



CHAPTER III. 

OF THE SACCHARINE FRUITS, JUICES, AND INFUSIONS USED IN THE 
PREPARATION OF FERMENTED AND SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS. 

The juice of :ill the sweet fruits when expressed and left to 
itself under the influence of a suitable temperature, presents the re- 
markable phenomenon of fermentation, in the course of which the 
sugar disappears completely, and is replaced by alcohol, the change 
from first to last being accompanied by the disengagement of car- 
bonic acid gas. 

Sugar alone does not suffice to cause the vegetable juices, which 
contam it, to ferment : for example, a solution of pure sugar in dis- 
tilled water will remain for a very great length of time without suf- 
fering the least change ; exposed to the open air it would evaporate, 
and the saccharine matter would be found in the same state as it 
was before solution If, however, a small quantity of that azotized 
principle which we have called albumen, gluten, &c., be introduced 
into the solution, fermentation will speedily be set up, and will run 
through its usual course; it would, therefore, appear to be upon this 
principle that the commencement and continuance of fermentation 
depends. Fermentation is not set up immediately in the juice of 
fruits ; a certain time longer or shorter always elapses before it is 
manifested ; the reason of this is, that the albumen or gluten which 
always enters into the constitution of these juices, must itself have 
undergone a certain change in order to act as a ferment. The proof 
of this is comprised in the fact that all vinous liquors contain a very 
small but constant quantity of carbonate of ammonia, as was shown 
by M. Doebereiner. These azotized principles, which in the fresh 
state remain without action upon sweet juices, act immediately as 
powerful ferments when they are employed after having been ex- 
posed for some days to the contact of air and moisture ; after, in a 
word, they have themselves begun to suffer change. The quantity 
of ferment used up or consumed in exciting and maintaining the fer- 
mentation of saccharine juices is so small, that we are led to believe 
that it really acts by its presence or contact alone. This view ap- 
pears the more likely, when we know that, after having added an 
azotized substance to induce fermentation rapidly in a liquid which, 
besides sugar, contains albumen, we find from six to eight times the 
quantity of ferment after the phenomena have ceased, which had 
been added in the first instance ; that is to say, we find the whole, 
or almost the whole, of the original ferment, and, in addition, that 
which has been produced by the azotized principles pre-existing in 
the matter subjected to fennentation ; this fact is seen every day in 
the process of making beer. 

The ferment or yeast thus produced is but little soluble in water, 
and in composition bears a remarkable affinity to the azotized mat- 

17 



194 THE VINOUS FERMENTATION. 

ters from which it is derived ; M. Dumas has in fact found it to be 
composed of : 

Carbon SO.G 

Hydrogen T.3 

Azote 15.0 

Oxygen ) 

Pulphur S 27.1 

Phosphorus j 

100.0 

Under the influence of ferment, sugar becomes entirely changed 
into alcohol and carbonic acid. The composition of grape-sugar — 
which appears to be the only one that is susceptible of fermentation, 
for cane-sugar before undergoing this process passes into the state 
of grape-sugar, as was demonstrated by M. Henry Rose — the com- 
position of grape-sugar is as follows : 

Carbon 3M 

Hydrogen 7.0 

Oxygen 50.0 

loo.o' 

and the constitution of the substances which are produced in the 
process of fermentation, viz. alcohol and carbonic acid, being as 
under : 

Aiiliydrous alcohol. Carbonic acid. Water. 

Carbon .'52.19 27.27 

Hydrogen 13.02 " 11.1 

Oxygen .34.79 72.73 88. 9 

lUO.O 100.0 100.0 

It appears that the composition of 100 parts of grape-sugar may be 
expressed by : 

Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. 

Alcohol 46.16 containing 24.24 6.05 16.17 

Carbonicncid 44.45 " 11.12 " 32.33 

Water 9.09 " " 1.01 8.08 

lOO.Oi) 36.36 7.06 58.58 

oy which it would appear that during the transformation of hydrated 
grape-sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid, the combined water is 
set at liberty. . 

The first fermented vegetable juice of which I shaft speak is 
cane-wine, or guarapo of the South Americans, a drink which is in 
common use wherever the sugar-cane is cultivated. It is prepared 
from the juice of the sugar-cane suffered to run into fermentation. 

The chicha of South America is a fermented liquor prepared from 
Indian corn, and constitutes the wine of the Cordilleras. The grain 
is steeped for six or eight hours in water, bruised upon a stone and 
boiled ; t!ie j)ulp wiiich results is then diffused tlirough 4' times its 
■volume of wafer, and the temperature being from (iO" to 65" F., a 
violent fermentation is soon set up in the fluid, which begins to sub- 
side after a period of twenty-four hours, when the chicha is potable, 
and now constitutes a liquor of an agreeable and decidedly vinous 
flavor, in high repute with those who have acquired a taste for it, 
although its muddy appearance and the sediment, which it always 



CIDER AND PERRY WINES. 195 

lets fall in the vessel into which it is received, render it somewhat 
unpleasant at first to European eyes. The Indians, however, always 
drink it in the muddy state, and even shake the cask before turning 
f the tap. The truth is, that chicha is at once a drink and a very nu- 
ti'itious food. 

Guarazo is another vinous liquor which the Indians prepare with 
rice much in the same manner as they proceed with Indian corn. 

Cider and Perry. In countries where the vine is not cultivated, 
a substitute for wine is found in the fermented juice of a variety of 
sweet pulpy fruits, more particularly of apples and pears. Of the 
numerous varieties of apples which are grown in cider countries, the 
preference is generally given to one which has a rough and some- 
what bitter taste. The fruit is gathered by shaking or beating the 
trees, and the few that remain are taken off by the hand ; the fruit 
is piled up in large backs placed in cellars. It is crushed al)0Ut two 
months after it is gatliered, and the pulp is left for ten or twelve 
hours to macerate in the juice, in order to giVe the rusty or yellow 
color which is esteemed in cider. The pulp is pressed and the juice 
is run into large vats or tuns, in which it undergoes fermentation, 
which having gone on for about a month, the temperature being 
from 55° to 58° F., the liquor is racked off into smaller vessels, in 
which the fermentation goes on slowly, and the cider is preserved. 
The fermentation of cider is, or always ought to be, slow ; still, with 
time, the whole of the sugar is transformed into alcohol, if the- pro- 
cess be not interfered with. 

Wine. Grape-juice contains — 1st. grape-sugar; 2d. albumen and 
gluten ; 3d. pectine ; 4lh. a gummy matter ; 5th. a coloring matter ; 
6lh. tannin ; 7th. bitartrate of potash ; 8th. a fragrant volatile oil, 
or cream of tartar ; 9th. water. It is obvious, therefore, that grape- 
juice contains within itself the elements necessary for the produc- 
tion of the vinous fermentation. The relative proportions of these 
different elements, however, are singularly modified according to the 
nature of the vine, the quality of the soil, and especially the heat 
of the climate. There are indeed few crops that are so much at 
the mercy of the atmosphere as that of the vine; even in tlie vine- 
yards that are most favorably situated, it is rare that wines of equal 
quality and flavor are produced in two consecutive years ; and in 
districts upon the verge of the productive limits of the vine, under 
what may be called extreme climates, where the vine only exists in 
virtue of hot summers, its produce is still more variable, more in- 
constant. The limits to the culture of the vine in Europe are 
generally fixed where the mean temperature is from 10° to 11° C, 
(50° to 52° F. ;) under a colder climate no drinkable wine is pro- 
duced. To this meteorological datum must be added the further 
fact that the mean heat of the cycle of vegetation of the vine must 
be at least 15° C. (59° F.,) and that of the summer from 18° to 19° 
C, (tVom 65° to 67° F.) Any country which has not these climatic 
conditions cannot have other than indifferent vine3'ards, even vvhen 
its mean annual temperature is above what I have indicated. It 
is impossible, for instance, to ciiliivale the vine upon the temperate 



196 WINE. 

table-lands of South America, where they nevertheless enjoy a 
mean temperature of from 17° to 19° C, (about 62.6° to 66.2° F.,) 
because that which characterizes the climate of these elevated 
equinoxial countries is the constancy of the temperature ; the vine 
grows, flourishes, but the grapes never become thoroughly ripe. In 
tlicse equatorial countries good wine cannot be made where the con- 
stant temperature is not at least 20° C, (or 68° F.) 

In France the vine begins to sprout towards the end of March, 
and the vintage generally occurs in the course of October. As the 
quality of wine depends mainly on the ripeness of the grapes, of 
course the vintage does not take place until this is complete, or until 
there is no longer any prospect of improvement. 

The must of the grape is procured by treading and pressing the 
fruit ; the juice is run into vats, and the fermentation takes place in 
cellars ; different procedures, however, are followed in different 
places. The fermentation having subsided in the larger vessels, the 
wine is drawn off into smaller casks, which are carefully filled up 
from time to time, and in which it is preserved. 

Wine may be defective, especially by wanting strength and being 
too acid. Sharp wine contains an excess of cream of tartar and 
free vegetable acids, and is always the produce of grapes which 
have not been completely ripe. The deficiency of strength is due 
to the same cause ; for it is well known that as the grape ripens its 
acids disappear and are replaced by sugar. This deficiency of sac- 
charine matter in the must, is now habitually supplied by the addition 
of a quantity of artificial grape-sugar, prepared from starch. In 
warm countries, where the grape always ripens, the quantity of tar- 
tar is small ; the sugar then predominates greatly, sometimes to such 
an extent that the azotized substance of the must is insufficient as a 
ferment, and it is then that w'e have wines of too sweet a flavor, 
such as those of Lunel and of Frontignac. When these musts, 
which are so rich in sugar, contain the proper quantity of ferment 
they produce very strong wines, in which, of course, the sweet 
flavor no longer predominates ; such are the dry wines of southern 
vineyards, of which that of Madeira may be taken as the type. 
There are some wines which participate at once in the properties 
that distinguish the two varieties that I have mentioned, or that show 
one of them in excess according to circumstances ; such are the 
v.ines of Xeres, Alicant, Malaga, &c. Some of these wines are 
what are called boiled wines, that is to say, a portion of the must, as 
it flows from the press, is concentrated to a fourth or a fifth of its 
original bulk by boiling, and this being added to the rest, the strength 
of the resulting wine is increased. Somelimes the concentration 
of the juice is effected by drying the grapes partially. It is in this 
way that the celebrated Hungarian wine, called Tokay, is prepared ; 
the clusters are left upon the vines after they are ripe, and alternate- 
ly exposed to the cold of the night, which probably decomposes to a 
certain extent the texture of the grapes, and to the heat of the sun. 
They shrivel and become partially dry. In this state the grapes are 
subjected to pressure, and a very sweet must, as may be conceived. 



WINE. 



197 



flows from them. In less favorable climates, where the rains of au- 
tumn prevent the drying of the clusters upon the vine stocks, the 
same thing is effected by laying the bunches upon straw in open or 
well-aired granaries or sheds. It is with the must procured from 
grapes so treated, that the sweet and often strong wines, which are 
called vins de paille, or straw wines, are obtained. Wines when 
stored in the cask always deposite with time a copious sediment, the 
lees. This sediment, in which tartar predominates, appears to be 
the consequence of an increase in the proportion of alcohol in the 
liquor. The alcohol may increase from two causes : first, by the 
fermentation which, though nearly insensible, goes on in most wines 
so long as there is any sugar left unchanged ; and next from mere 
keeping. It is well known, in fact, that wine put into the best 
casks, and kept in a well-ventilated cellar, loses a very perceptible 
quantity by evaporation ; it is found necessary to fill up the casks 
from time to time : the loss has taken place through the pores of 
the wood, in virtue of an attraction exerted between the substance 
of the wood and the included liquid ; and as this attraction is much 
greater between the organic matter and water, than between organic 
fibre and alcohol, it is easy to conceive how wine kept in wood 
should improve. The very same thing, in fact, appears to go on in 
regard to wine in corked bottles : the cork does not oppose all 
evaporation, and it seems probable that it is not merely upon some 
new and little known change of a chemical nature in the constitu- 
tion of the wine that its improvement and mellowing in bottle de- 
pend, but also upon the loss of a certain quantity of its water through 
the pores of the cork. 

Throwing quality, flavor, &c., out of the question, it is well knowa 
that a vineyard, culivated in the same way, year after year, receiv- 
ing the same quantity of the same kind of manure, of which the 
vintage is managed in the same manner, the wine made by the same 
method, &c., yields a produce which differs greatly in regard to the 
quantity of alcohol it contains in different years. The vineyard of 
Schmalzberg, for example, near Lampertsloch, which has been 
under my management for several years, yields wines of the most 
dissimilar characters from one year to another. Some idea of this 
may be formed from the different quantities of alcohol which the 
wine of different years contains : 





Mean temperature. 






Pure al- 








Tears. 


Of the whole term of 






Wine 


Pure alco- 


cohol 




the prowth of the 


Of the summer. 


autumo. 


in gallons. 


per cent. 


per acre, 
in gallons. 




deB. dej. 


deg, deg. 


deg. deg. 








1833 


14.7C."58.4F. 


17.3C. 63.1F. 


11. 4C. 51 .5F. 


311 


5.0 


11.4 


1834 


17.3 63.1 


20.3 68.^ 


17.0 63 


314 


11.2 


46.3 


1835 


15.8 G0.2 


1'.).5 67 


12.3 .54 


621 


8.1 


50.0 


1836 


15.8 60.2 


21.5 71 


12.2 54 


544 


7.1 


38.6 


1837 


15.2 59.5 


18.7 66 


11.9 54 


184 


7.7 


14.0 



17^ 



198 AVINE, 

If we now inquire how the meteorological circumstances of each 
of these five years influenced the production of our wine, we see at 
once that the mean temperature of the days which make up the 
period of the cultivation of the wine has a perceptil)le influence. 
The temperature of the summer was 17.3° C. (63.1° Fahr.) of the 
year wliich yielded the strongest wine, and only 14.7° C. (58.4° 
Fahr.) in 1833, the wine of which was scarcely drinkahle. 

A hot summer is naturally favorable to the vine : the mean heat 
of 1833 did not exceed 17^° C. (63^^° Fahr. ;) with the exception of 
this year, which must be regarded as one of the very worst, the 
three favorable summers, 1834, 35, and 36, show a mean tempera- 
ture of about 20" C. (68° Fahr.) It is not, however, with the warm- 
est summer that we find the strongest wine to correspond. Besides 
the sustained heat, which is necessary during the whole year's 
growth of the vine, it would appear that a mild autumn was a con- 
dition necessary to the perfect ripening of the grapes : this is one of 
the essential conditions. We see, in fact, that in 1834, the months 
of September and October presented the extraordinary temperature 
of 17° C, (62.6° Fahr.,) while in 1833, the temperature of the same 
Hionths did not rise higher than 11.4° C. (51.5° Fahr.) I shall 
here add, that the year 1811, so remarkable over Europe for the 
quantity and the excellence of its wines, was distinguished by the 
high temperature of the early part of its autumn ; we find, in fact, 
from the excellent series of observations with which M. llerren- 
schneider has presented Alsace, that in this year, after a summer the 
mean temperature of which was 19.6° C. (67.8° Fahr.,) the heat of 
the months of September and October was maintained at 15° C. (59° 
Fahr.,) the usual temperature of the months of September and 
October not being higher than about 11.5" C. (52.7° Fahr.) 

If we deduct from these observations the years 1833 and 1837, 
which were decidedly bad, it seems that we must conclude that me- 
teorological influences have a greater elTect upon the quality of 
wines, than upon the whole quantity of alcohol formed ; thus, al- 
though the wine of 1836 was very inferior to that of 1834, it actual- 
ly yielded a larger proportion of alcohol from the acre. 

In Alsace, in order tliat a year may be favorable to the vine, the 
temperature of those months during which the plant is alive must 
be sensibly superior to the mean : a fact which appears from M. 
Herrenschneider's long series of observations. In a climate where 
the vine requires such a condition to succeed, it is obvious that its 
cultivation can never be advantageous ; and this, in fact, is the case ; 
the cultivation of the wine would, indeed, be altogether ruinous, were 
it not for the circumstance that the value of wine increased in a 
much greater ratio than its quality, so that one good year often in- 
demnifies the grower for many bad years. Another consideration 
is this, that tiie vine, like the olive, grows and thrives in situations 
where it would be dillicult to ])ut any thing else. 

The produce of a vineyard also depends upon its age ; and it 
would be curious to examine the progressive increase of the quanti- 
ty of wine yielded. This information I am able to give in connec- 



wi^'E. 



199 



tion with a vineyard established in Flanders ; 1 only regret that I 
have no means of presenting parallel observations from a country 
more favorable to the vine. The vineyard of Schmalzberg was 
planted in 18-i-3, with new cuttings from France, and from the 
borders of tlie Rhine. The vines are trained as espaliers, and are 
now rather more than four feet in height. The vineyard began to 
yield wine in 1825, and the following table shows the results in the 
successive years up to 1837 : 



v«->*.- 


Wine per Acre in 


Years. 


Wine per Acre in 


1 ecl>:?. 


Gallons. 


Gallons. 


1825 


68.75 


1832 


209.9 


1826 


192.0 


1833 


311.6 


1827 


0.0 


1834 


413.4 


1828 


115.0 


1835 


* 620.0 


1829 


55.9 


1836 


544.5 


1830 


0.0 


1837 


184.4 


1831 


153.0 







The mean quantity of wine furnished by this vineyard from the 
date of its plantation, is 224^ gallons per acre. M. A'illeneuve 
reckons the mean produce of many vineyards in the southwest of 
France at from about 110 to 192 gallons per acre, considerably less 
consequently than our vineyard at Schmalzberg; and official docu- 
ments, while they give the mean produce of the vine for the whole 
of France as 170.9 gallons per acre, state the whole of the wine 
produced over the country at 970,906,414 gallons. 

From documents recently published, the whole produce of the 
vineyards of tlie German States brought to market appears to be 
59,180,000 gallons. 

Puhjue. This is a vinous liquor, indigenous to Mexico and some 
parts of Peru, and is prepared from the sap of the Agave Americana. 
When this plant is about to flower, a hole is inade into the upper 
part of its stem, uhich by and by becomes filled with juice, and is 
removed two or three times in the course of the twenty-four hours ; 
this sap is very sweet, runs quickly into fermentation, and yields the 
liquor called pulque. The flow of sap continues for two or three 
months, and a single plant will yield from six to eight quarts per 
day. In tlie neighborhood of a large town, which ensures a ready 
sale for the produce, a plantation of Agave is one of the most pro- 
fitable possessions; in the neighborhood of Cholula there are single 
plantations which are worth from £8,000 to £12,000. 



200 . SOIL. 



CHAPTER IV. 



The solid mass of our earth does not everywhere present the 
same physical characters, or the same chemical composition. In 
traversing a mountainous country of any extent, we seldom fail to 
observe a notable difference in the nature and relative position of the 
rocks which compose it ; the idea which forces itself upon the mind 
in such circumstances is, that these mineral masses iiavc not had 
the same origin, that they have been formed and placed in their 
several situations at distinct and often distant epochs. 

In examining attentively the inequalities which mark the surface 
of the globe, we soon perceive that those rocks which generally 
form the most elevated points, the axis or skeleton of mountain 
chains, result from the agglomeration or intimate mixture of different 
mineral substances which may be isolated and separately studied. 

These crystalline masses are frequently covered to a certain 
depth, and even completely concealed by rocks of more recent for- 
mation, the fragmentary elements of which proclaim their origin 
from the attrition or breaking down of the strata which support 
them. The regular stratification of these superimposed rocks, the 
configuration of their minute particles, the remains of organized beings 
which are found in them, proclaim them to be deposites which have 
taken place successively, and from the ocean. The formation of the 
crystalline rocks probably dates from the period at which the crust 
of the globe became solid. These elements, intimately mingled by 
fusion, combined as they cooled, according to the laws of alfmity, to 
constitute the mineral species which we encounter ; just as it hap- 
pens that mineral species, identical with those which we observe in 
nature, are produced and crystallize during the consolidation of cer- 
tain scoriaj from our furnaces. 

The various circumstances which have accompanied the cooling 
of the crust of the globe, have doubtless occasioned the differences 
which we observe in the distribution of the minerals that enter into 
the composition of rocks. Thus granite and mica schist, which pre- 
sent so dissimilar a structure, are nevertheless, and very certamly, 
varieties of the same species, and contain quartz, felspar, and mica. 
In sienite,the mica is replaced by amphibolite, and in protogenite by 
talc. In trachite, a volcanic rock, both of older and more recent 
date, quartz is almost entirely wanting ; the amphibolite is replaced 
by pyroxenite, and the felspar which is encountered, is no longer 
identical in its chemical composition with that which enters into the 
constitution of granite. The limestone rock, which belongs to the 
same Plutonic epoch, is granular or saccharoid ; occasionally the 
intervention of magnesia makes it pass into dolomite. 

The sedimentary strata do not vary less in their composition. The 



OIL. 201 

causes which segregated the rocks of igneous origin, appear to have 
destroyed or removed one or several of their elements before their 
new consolidation ; one of the most common deposites, sandstone or 
grit, is almost wholly composed of grains of quartz, amidst which 
particles of mica are frequently encountered ; but felspar is ex- 
tremely rare. In the oldest sedimentary strata of the series, as in 
the greywackes, the igneous elements are met with more complete, 
and less altered. The structure of the calcareous rocks of this 
epoch is often compact, clayey ; it becomes porous and friable in 
deposites of more recent date. 

The stratified rocks must have been deposited in parallel superim- 
posed layers, and these strata, horizontal in the beginning, have been 
forced into the inclined and perpendicular positions which they now 
occupy by the tumefaction or rising of the masses upon which they 
rest. The organic remains which they present, frequently in such 
quantity, proclaim that in the period when the revolutions of the 
globe took place that gave them birth, there were already animated 
beings and plants growing upon the surface of the earth. The pro- 
duction of sedimentary strata, is an obvious proof that the igneous 
rocks of which they are the product, must have been segregated, so 
as to form beds of gravel, and sand, and clay. The elements of all 
stratified rocks must necessarily have passed through these different 
states before the powerful causes which consolidated them, of the 
nature of which we cannot now form an estimate, came into play. 
The disintegration of the crystalline igneous rocks proceeds under 
our eyes, as it were, from the combined actions of water and the at- 
mosphere. 

Water, by reason of its fluidity, penetrates the masses of rocks 
that are at all porous; it filters into their fissures. If the tempera- 
ture now fall, and the water comes to congeal, it separates by its 
dilatation the molecules of the mineral from one another, destroys 
their cohesion, and produces clefts which slowly reduce the hardest 
rocks to fragments, and then to powder. During the frozen state, 
the ice may serve as a cement, and connect the disintegrated parti- 
cles ; but with the thaw, the slightest force, currents of water, the 
mere eflect of weight, suffices to carry the fragments to the bottom 
of the valley, and the rubbing and motion to which these fragments 
of rocks are exposed in torrents, tend to break them still smaller, and 
to reduce them to sand. 

The quantity of earthy matter brought down by streams and rivers, 
is considerable : an idea may be formed of it from the thickness of 
the slime or mud deposited by a river which has overflowed its banks. 
In many situations, the arable soil is either formed entirely, or is 
powerfully ameliorated by such alluvial deposites. The fertilizing 
powers of the mud of the Nile are well known ; according to Shaw, 
the waters of this river carry with them about the 132d part of their vol- 
ume ; those of the Rhine, at the periods of its great increase, bringdown 
more than the 100th part ; and Ur. Barrow, from observations made 
in China, estimates at the 200lh part of the volume of the mass of 
fluid, the mud and slime which are carried towards the sea by the 



202 SOIL. 

Yellow river. These fluviatile deposites accumulate at the mouths 
of n^reat rivers, and gradually encroach upon the ocean ; this is very 
conspicuous, for example, at the mouths of the Elbe, where, at the 
turn of the tide, when there is an interval of calm, the earthy n. al- 
ters which are held in suspension are precipitated, and a sediment 
results, which is thrown up by the next waves upon the beach. By 
these successive deposites, the beach rises gradually, and an extensive 
alluvium is formed which remains dry at neap and ordinary tides. 
These new lands, the fertility of which is truly surprising, constitute 
the polders of which the Dutch make so much. During spring 
tides, and storms from particular quarters, these polders would of 
course be all submerged, had not the active industry of the inhabit- 
ants raised dykes, which successfully oppose the waters of the 
ocean. 

Besides the mechanical causes of the destruction of rocks al- 
ready quoted, there is a chemical action depending upon meteoro- 
logical influences, which exerts a powerful influence upon the con- 
stituent elements of crystalline rocks. Felspar, amphibolite, mica, 
and the protoxide of iron suffer decomposition in certain circum- 
stances with surprising rapidity, without our being able to foresee, 
and still less to exjjlain, this singular tendency to destruction. Iii 
granite, for example, the felspar and the mica lose their vitreous 
and crystalline state, they become friable, earthy, and are trans- 
formed into an argillaceous substance, whicli is known in the arts 
under the name of kaoline, and which is extensively used in the 
manufacture of porcelain ; amphibolite, and pyroxenite, undergo an 
alteration of the same kind. In these minerals the protoxide of iron 
passes to the slate of the maximum of oxidation. Tlie air and 
moisture appear to exert a great influence upon this alteration, which 
frequently extends to a great depth, as we see in the beds of porce- 
lain earth, which are worked in various granite districts, and as I 
have myself ascertained, ill a bed of decomposed syenitic porphyry 
where there are very extensive subterraneous works. In these 
works, which are carricul on in auriferous strata, the alteration in 
tlie felspar and amphibolite can be followed to a depth of nearly 330 
feet. In the midst of the rocks so (dianged, we every here and there 
meet with masses which have resisted the decomposing action, and 
still possess all their original hardness and freshness. Jlistorical 
luonuments also show us unalterable granites ; such is that, for iu- 
st;ince, which now forms tiie obf^Jisk in the square of San (Jiovanni 
di Laterano at Rome, and which was cut at Siena, under the reign 
of a king of'l'hebes, ttiirteen hundred years before the (Christian era. 
Such is further the obelisk of the Place of St. Peter, which was 
consecrated to the sun by a son of Sesostris more tlian three thou- 
sand years ago. 

The schists, by reason of their structure, wear away with much 
greater facility, ('alcareous rocks resist almosi)hericaI agencies 
somewhat better ; but their softness in general suflers thein to be 
readily attacked by mechanical causes, and water even acts upon 
them as a solvent through the medium of the carbonic acid which 



SOIL. 203 

it always contains. The resistance of the greywackes, and of the 
sandstones depends in a great measure on the nature and cohesion 
of the cement which unites their particles; their power of resisting, 
however, is generally inconsiderable, and these rocks fall down 
pretty rapidly into sandy soils. 

The modifications experienced by the constituent minerals of 
rocky masses, do not happen solely from changes in the molecular 
state of their elements ; their chemical nature is further deeply 
changed, and some of their original principles disappear. The fel- 
spars, for example, into the constitution of which potash and soda 
enter, abandon almost the whole of these alkalies, in passing into 
the state of kaoline. This is made manifest by a comparison of ihe 
analyses of the mineral in its two states. Besides the alkali which 
is lost, we also perceive that in kaoline, the proportion of alumen 
relatively to that of silica, is much greater than in the undecomposed 
felspar, a fact which, according to M. Berthier, demonstrates that 
the alkali is removed in the state of silicate. 

The final result of the disintegration of rocl;s, and of the decom- 
position of the minerals which enter into their constitution, is the 
formation of those alluviums which occupy the slopes of mountains 
that are not too steep, the bottoms of valleys, and the most extensive 
plains. These deposites, however formed, whether of stones, peb- 
bles, gravel, sand, or clay, may become the basis of a vegetable soil, 
if they are only sufficiently loose and moist. Vegetation of any kind 
succeeds upon them at first with ditficulty. Plants which by their 
nature live in a great measure at the expense of the atmosphere, and 
whick ask from the earth little or nothing more than a support, fix 
themselves there when the climate permits. Cactuses and fleshy 
plants take root in sands ; mimosas, the broom, the furze, &c.. show 
themselves upon gravels. These plants grow, and after their death, 
either in part or wholly, leave a debris wliich becomes profitable to 
succeeding generations of vegetables. Organic matter accumulates 
in the course of ages, even in the most ungrateful soils in this wa)'', 
and by these repeated additions they become less and less sterile. 
It is probable that the virgin forests of the new world have thus 
supplied' the wonderful quantity of vegetable mould, in which the 
])rcsent generation of trees is rooted. At Lavega de Supia, in South 
America, the slipping of a porphyritic mountain covered completely 
with its debris, to the extent of nearly half a league, the rich plan- 
tations of sugar-cane which were there established. Ten years af- 
terwards I saw the blocks of porphyry shadowed by thick groves of 
mimosas ; and the time perchance is not very remote when this new 
forest will be cleared away, and the stony soil, enriched with its 
sjipils, will be restored to the husbandman. 

The ciiemical composition of the earth, adapted for vegetation, 
must of course participate in the nature of the rocks and substrata 
from which it is derived ; and the elements which enter into the 
constitution of mineral species ought to be found in the soils, which, 
by the effect of time or human industry, may serve for the repro- 
duction of vegetables. It is on this account that it becomes inter- 



304 



SOIL. 



esting to know the composition of the minerals which are the most 
abundantly dispersed in the solid mass of the globe. 

The solid part of our planet, as is well known, occupies but one- 
third of its whole surface. The ocean occupies t\\ o-liurds, and the 
majority of the rocks of sedimentary formation must have been pri- 
marily deposited at the bottom of the sea. These rocks will there- 
fore be apt to contain the saline substances which are met with in 
sea-water, and it is a fact that many of the secondary sandstones 
show unequivocal traces of these substances. Deltas and low downs, 
left by the ocean, are constantly being brought under tillage, and the 
fierce winds of the sea frequently carry saline matters to vast dis- 
tances, even to the centre of great continents ; lastly, as we shall 
see by and by, the ocean supplies agriculture with powerful manures. 
Analysis shows that sea-water contains, besides chloride of sodium 
or common salt, hydrochlorate of magnesia, sulphate of soda, sul- 
phate of magnesia, sulphate of lime, carbonate of lime, carbonate of 
magnesia, and a quantity of carbonic acid, to which must be added 
the substances discovered in the mother waters of salt marsiies, and 
which occur with reference to the others in quantities so small as to 
escape direct analyses of any moderate portions of sea-water : these 
substances are iodides, bromides, and certain ammoniacal salts. 

The minerals most generally found in rocks are quartz, felspar, 
mica, amphibolite, pyro.xenite, talc, serpentine, and diallage. 

Quartz is frequently composed of silica nearly in a state of purity ; 
but I may save time by presenting in a single table the composition 
of the principal mineral species such as we find it indicated by the 
best chemical analysts : 



COMPOSITION. 











. 




V. 


a 


Alu- 


Lime. 


Mag- 


J= 




si 


■■=: 


iiiina. 








•o 




m 








a> 


m 


o 


66.8 


17.5 


1.3 




12.0 




0.8 


61.0 


19.2 




1.0 


11.5 




4.2 


68.0 


19.6 


0.7 






11.1 


0.2 


68.7 


19.9 




traces 




9.1 


0.3 


■w.o 


16.1 




26.0 


7.6 




4.9 


48.. 5 


33.9 






11.3 






45.7 


12.2 


13.8 


18.8 






7.3 


54.6 




24.9 


18.0 






1.8 


54. <l 


0.2 


23.0 


10.5 






4.4 


4a. 3 






44.2 






0.2 


43.1 


0.3 


0.5 


40.4 






1.2 


47. y 


3.7 


13.1 


24.4 






7.4 


.58.'.' 


traces 




33.2 






4.6 


62.0 






30.5 


2.8 




2.5 



■Si c 



Felspar of Lomnitz .... 

Ditto Domite 

Ditto Alhito of Finland 
Ditto .\ll)iteof Arendal 

Siljerian .Mica 

Mica from the U. States 

Aniphiholite of Pargas . 

White Pyro.\cnite 

Groen ditto 

Serpentine 

Ditto, another kind ■ •• • 

Spezian Dialla(;o 

Talc from St. Bernard.. 

Ditto from St.Gothard- ■ 



0.5 

traces 

1.3 
0.2 
2.0 
0.4 



13.3 
12.5 
3.2 
3.5 
0.5 



If we now compare the analyses of the ashes of vegetables which 
we have already given with those just indicated, wc see that the 
mineral substances which meet us in plants also exist in the soil in- 
dependently of any addition from manure. We may therefore lay it 



SOIL. 205 

down as a principle that the mineral substances encountered in vege- 
tables are obtained in the soil, and that the whole of these substances 
come from rocks which form the solid crust of our planet. I ought, 
however, to observe in this place that the phosphates, which are so 
constantly present in plants that it is to be presumed they are essen- 
tial to their organization, do not figure among the elements of crys- 
talline r6cks ; we only meet with phosphoric acid in the strata of a 
more recent geological epoch, — strata the formation of which has in- 
deed followed the appearance of organized beings ; so that it would 
be quite fair to maintain that this acid had been introduced into 
these new strata by the animated beings which are buried in them. 
Still the phosphates are by no means wanting in the rocks of igne- 
ous origin. In metalliferous strata, to (juote those of more common 
occurrence only, we find phosphate of lead, of copper, of manganese, 
and of lime ; it is even difficult to discover a ferruginous mineral 
which does not contain a larger or smaller dose of phosphoric acid. 
And I must here add, that if phosphoric acid has been rarely indi- 
cated as a constituent of mineral substances, this is by no means 
from its uniform absence there, but because it escaped the researches 
of the analyst, in the same way as iodine and bromine for a long time 
escaped notice in all the analyses that were made of sea-water. 
Chemists, in fact, only discover those bodies readily which exist in 
some very appreciable quantity in the compounds they examine. 
The substances whose presence is not foreseen, those which only 
enter in extremely small quantity into a mineral, ai"e apt to pass the 
eyes of even the most skilful and conscientious unperceived. 

The ashes of every vegetable examined up to the present tirne 
show us phosphates, and yet these salts have never been detected 
in any of the analyses of saps (not very numerous it is true) which 
we possess ; it is, nevertheless, all but certain that the sap must 
contain phosphoric acid in some state of combination or another. 

Thaer compares the soil in husbandry to the raw material upon 
which the industry of the manufacturer is exercised ; the comparison 
would, perhaps, be more exact were the soil likened to the mechani- 
cal agents he uses ; and, in fact, even as the prosperity of manufac- 
tures and the perfection of their produce depend upon the perfection 
of the machinery employed, so are the quality and the quantity of 
crops connected in the most intimate manner with the quality of the 
soil. The highest skill of the husbandman, even under a favorable 
climate, and otherwise in the most advantageous circumstances, may 
all be made nugatory by the incessantly renewed difficulties which 
meet him in a barren soil. 

To be truly fit for agriculture the earth ought to present several 
essential qualities ; a soil, for instance, must be sufficiently open, 
sufficiently loose, to permit the roots of plants to penetrate it, and to 
prevent the water from stagnating upon it. The matter of which it 
is composed must, further, be of such a kind that the air may insinu- 
ate itself into it and be renewed, without, however, too rapid a des- 
iccation following. 

A great deal has been written since Bergman's time upon the 

18 



206 SOIL SAND AND CLAV. 

chemical composition of soils. Chemists of great talent have made 
many complete ana]3'scs of soils noted for their fertility ; still practical 
agriculture has hitherto derived very slender benefits from labors of 
this kind. The reason of tliis is very simple ; the qualities which we 
esteem in a workable soil depend almost exclusively upon the me- 
chanical mixture of its elements ; we are much less interested in its 
chemical composition than in this ; so that simple washing, which 
shows the relations between the sand and the clay, tells, of itself, much 
more that is important to us than an elaborate ciicmical analysis. 
The quality of an arable soil depends essentially on the association 
of these two matters. Sand, whether it be silicious, calcareous, or 
felspathic, always renders a soil friable, permeable, loose ; it facili- 
tates the access of the air and the drainage of the water, and its in- 
fluence is more or less favorable as it exists in the state of minute 
subdivision, or in the state of coarse sand or of gravel. 

Clay possesses physical properties entirely opposed to those of 
sand ; united with water it forms an adhesive plastic paste, which, 
once moistened, becomes almost impermeable. With such charac- 
ters, it will easily be conceived how it is impossible to work to ad- 
vantage a soil that is entirely argillaceous. The proper character, 
or, if you will, the quality of a soil, depends, then, essentially on 
the element which predominates in the mixture of sand and clay that 
composes it ; and between the two extremes, which are alike un- 
favorable to vegetation, viz., the completely sandy soil and the un- 
mixed clay, all the other varieties, all the intermediate shades can 
be placed. It is rare, indeed, that arable soils are formed solely of 
sand and clay : not to mention certain saline substances which are 
generally encountered, although in small quantity, we always find 
the remains of organic matters, remains which constitute that part 
of a soil which has been designated under the somewhat vague name 
of humus. Although a soil which is entirely without humus may be 
cultivated by calling in the aid of manure, and as humus, consequent- 
ly, need not be regarded as indispensable, still this matter generally 
enters, in certain proportions, into the constitution of soils. The 
soils of forest lands contain a large quantity of it, and some soils are 
mentioned which are very rich in this substance, and which yield 
abundant crops of grain for ages, and with very little attention. 

in examinmg a soil, attention ought to be directed, 1st, to the 
sand, 2d, to the clay, 3d, to the humus which it contains. It would, 
further, be useful to inquire particularly in regard to certain other 
principles which exert an unquestionable influence upon vegetation, 
such as certain alkaline and earthy salts. 

Vegetable earth dried in the air until it becomes quite friable 
may, nevertheless, still retain a considerable quantity of water, and 
which can only be dissipated by the assistance of a somewhat high 
temperature. It is therefore proper, in the first instance, to bring 
all the soils which it is proposed to examine comparatively, to one 
constant degree of dryness. The best and quickest way of drying 
such a substance as a portion of soil, is to make use of the oil-bath ; 
a quantity of oil contained in a copper vessel is readily kept at an 



SOIL ITS ANALYSIS. ' 207 

almost uniform temperature by means of a lamp. A thermometer 
plunged in the bath shows the degree to which it is heated ; the 
substance to be dried is put into a glass tube of no great depth, and 
sufficiently wide ; or into a porcehiin or silver capsule, if the quantity 
to be operated upon be somewhat considerable : these tubes, or ves- 
sels, are placed in the oil so as to be immersed in it to about two- 
thirds of their height. For the desiccation of soils, the temperature 
may be carried to 150" or IGO" C, (334° or 352" F.) The weight 
of the vessel is first accurately taken, and a given weight of the 
matter to be dried is then thrown into it, after which it is exposed to 
the action of the bath. If we operate upon from 600 to 700 grains, 
the drying must be continued during two or three hours; the weight 
of the capsule with its contents, after having been wiped thoroughly 
clean, is then taken. It is placed anew in the bath, and its weight is 
taken a second time after an interval of fifteen or twenty minutes ; 
if the weight has not diminished, it is a jn-oof that the drying was 
complete at the time of the first trial. In the contrary case, the 
operation must be continued, and no drying must be held terminated, 
until two consecutive weighings, made at an interval of from fifteen 
to twenty minutes, show any thing more than a very trifling differ- 
ence. Davy points out another and much more simple method, 
which, although far from accurate, may, nevertheless, suffice in 
many general trials. The soil to be dried is put into a porcelain 
capsule heated by a lamp, and a thermometer, with which the mass 
may be stirred, is placed in its middle, and shows the temperature at 
each moment. Lastly, in many circumstances the marine bath may 
suftice. Ill drying, the main point is to do so at a known tem- 
perature, and one which may be reproduced; for tlie absolute desic- 
cation of a quantity of soil could not be accomplished except at 
a heat close upon redness, and this would, of course, alter or destroy 
the organic matters it contains. 

The organic matters contained in ordinary soils consist, in part, 
of pieces of straw and of roots, which are usually separated by 
sifting the earth through a hair sieve ; the gravel and stones which 
the soil contains are separated in the same way. 

The earth sifted is now washed. To accomplish this, it is intro- 
duced into a matrass, with three or four times its bulk of hot distilled 
water, the whole is shaken well for a time, the matrass is left to 
stand for a moment, and then the liquid is decanted into a wide 
porcelain capsule. The washing is continued, fresh quantities of 
water being added each time, until the whole of the clay has been re- 
moved, which is known by the fluid becoming clear very speedily ; 
the sand which remains, is then washed out into another capsule. 
The argillaceous particles, or the clay and all the matters held 
in suspension in the water, are thrown upon a filter and dried ; 
the desiccation is completed by the same process, and under the 
same circumstances as that of the soil had been. The sand is, 
in like manner, dried with the same care. 

If we would ascertain tlie nature and quantity of the soluble salts, 
the whole of the water used in the wasliing must be put together 



208 SOIL ITS A.NALYSIis. 

and evaporated, which may be done upon a sand-bath. The evapo- 
ration is pushed to dryness, and the salts that remain, having been 
previously weighed, are thrown into a small platinum capsule, in 
which they are heated to a dull red by means of a spirit-lamp, in 
order to burn out the organic salts, and thus distinguish, by means 
of a subsequent weighing, between them and the inorganic salts. 

The sand may be silicious or calcareous. The presence of car- 
bonate of lime is readily ascertained by treating it with an acid which 
will form a soluble salt with lime, such as hydrochloric, nitric, or 
acetic acid. Effervescence shows the presence of a carbonate ; the 
quantity of which may be estimated by weighing the sand dry before 
and after its treatment with the acid, particular care being of course 
taken to wash the remaining sand well before setting it to dry. 
This, however, is an operation of little use, the great object is to as- 
certain the quantity of sandy matter. Had we a particular interest 
in ascertaining the presence and estimating the quantity of the earthy 
carbonates contained in a sample of soil, it would be advisable to 
make a special inquiry, inasmuch as the finely divided calcareous 
earth being carried off along with the clay in the course of the wash- 
ing, the sand obtained never contains the whole of the carbonate of 
lime. 

The argillaceous matter procured by the washing is far from being 
pure clay ; it contains a quantity of extremely fine sand, particles 
of calcareous earth, and if the soil contain humus, the more delicate 
particles of this substance will also be included. 

To determine the quantity of humus, recourse is generally had to 
its destruction by heat. A known weight of dried earth is heated 
to redness in a capsule, and constantly stirred for a time, and vviien 
no more of those brilliant points or sparks, which are indications of 
the combustion of carbon, are observed, it is set to cool and then 
weighed. This is the method which has been generally followed by 
Davy and others. It would be difficult to find a method more con- 
venient than this, but it is untbrtunntely very inaccurate. Soils 
dried at a temperature at which organic matter, such as humus, &c., 
begins to change, still retain a considerable quantity of water in union 
with the clay. This water is disengaged at the red heat required 
for the combustion of the organic matters ; and as their quantity is 
estimated by the loss of weight on the subsequent weighing, it is ob- 
vious tliat the loss from the dissipation of water is added to that 
which proceeds from tiie destruction of the humus. It' is undoubted- 
ly to this cause of error that we must ascribe the large proportions 
of humus mentioned in tlie soils examined by Thaer and Eitiholl"; it 
is therefore better to restrict the examination to the determination 
of the presence or absence of humus than to attempt to ascertain its 
quanthy by so imperfect a method. 

Priestley and Arthur Young were already aware that a more deli- 
cate operation was required to determine the quantity of humus. 
They recommend calcination of the soil in a close vessel, and that 
the gaseous products should be collected. This mode of proceeding, 
however, would have but slight advantages over that which I have 



SOIL ITS ANALYSIS. 209 

just criticised, inasmuch as the volume of gas collected varies with 
every difference of heat employed. 

The only method in my opinion which we have of learning the 
quantity of humus, of organic debris, which is contained in a soil, 
is that of an elementary analysis. It is by burning a known quanti- 
ty of earth thoroughly dried by means of the oxide of copper, aided 
by a current of oxygen, that the carbon and hydrogen may be de- 
termined. But the most important point of all is to ascertain the 
amount of azote included in the organic remains of the soil; and we 
have happily precise means in our elementary analysis of ascertain- 
ing the quantity of azote, from which the amount of azotized organic 
matter may be accurately inferred. 

It may be very useful to determine the presence or absence of 
carbonate of lime in a soil ; this knowledge would of course guide 
us in our applications of lime, marl, &c. Two modes may be em- 
ployed for this purpose ; 1st. the soil may be treated by nitric acid 
slightly diluted with water. Any effervescence will denote the 
presence, in all probability, of carbonate of lime. I say in all proba- 
bility, because the disengagement of carbonic acid gas under such 
circumstances generally indicates the presence of carbonate of lime ; 
it is not, however, a special character, because the disengagement 
may be due to the presence of any other carbonate. It is well to 
boil the acid solution upon the sample of soil that is analyzed ; the 
part which is not dissolved is thrown upon a filter and washed with 
distilled or rain-water boiling hot. Into the clear filtered liquor 
which results from all the portions of water used in the washing, a 
little ammonia is added ; if any precipitate falls, it is collected upon 
a filter and washed : to the new liquors obtained by this washing, a 
solution of oxalate of ammonia is added. If there be any lime pres- 
ent, it is thrown down in the state of oxalate, and the liquor, having 
been left at rest for five or six hours, becomes completely clear ; the 
addition of a few drops of the solution of oxalate of ammonia to this 
clear fluid satisfies us whether the whole of the lime has been pre- 
cipitated or not. The oxalate of lime is received upon a filter, wash- 
ed, and dried ; it is then thrown into a platinum capsule along with 
the piece of filtering paper upon which it was collected, and is heat- 
ed to a dull red, until the paper of the filter is completely consumed 
and no further trace of carbon appears ; the capsule is then taken 
from the fire or from over the spirit lamp, and cooled ; when cold, 
the matter which it contains is moistened with a concentrated solu- 
tion of carbonate of ammonia. 

The matter is then dried, great care being taken that nothing is 
lost by particles flying out, and the capsule is again heated to a dull 
red ; when cold, it is weighed accurately, and the quantity of matter 
contained then becomes known. This matter is carbonate of lime, 
100 of which represent 56.3 of lime and 43.7 of carbonic acid. I 
have said that in arable soil other carbonates may be met with be- 
sides that of lime ; calcareous soils, for example, very commonly 
contain carbonate of magnesia. If we would ascertain the quantity 
of this earth, the mode of proceeding which I have just particularly 

18* 



210 SOIL ITS ANALYSIS. 

indicated enables us to do so ; we have but to evaporate the liquid 
from which the oxalate of lime was deposited, and then to calcine 
the product of the evaporation in a platinum capsule. Any nitrate 
of man;nesia which may exist there will bo decomposed at a dull red 
heat, as well as any oxalate of ammonia which may have resulted 
from ammonia added in excess. By treating the residue of the cal- 
cination with water we obtain the magnesia, which being washed, 
has only to be calcined, and its weight ascertained by weighing. 

'2d. If we would be content with a simple approximation, we may 
judge of the quantity of calcareous carbonate contained in a vegeta- 
ble soil by measuring the quantity of carbonic acid which we ol)tain 
from it. We counterpoise upon the scale of a balance a ]ihial con- 
taining some diluted nitric acid ; wc weigh a certain quantity of the 
earth to be analyzed, and this is added by degrees to tlie acid. If 
the earth contains carbonates, effervescence ensues. The liquid is 
shaken with care, and having waited a few minutes in order to let 
the carbonic acid which is mixed with the air of the phial escape, 
the phial with its contents is again put into the balance. If there 
has been no disengagement of carbonic acid, it is clear that to restore 
the equilibrium it will be sufficient to add to the opposite scale the 
weight of the earth which was put into the phial ; whatever is want- 
ing of this weight represents precisely the weight of carbonic acid 
which has been disengaged. Presuming this acid to have been com- 
bined with lime, the weight of the calcareous carbonate can be cal- 
culated exactly. 

Sulphate of lime is an occasional constituent of soils ; to ascertain 
its presence and quantity, the following is the method of procedure : 

The earth well pulverized is first roasted for a considerable time 
in a crucible or platinum capsule, until all the organic matter is com- 
pletely destroyed ; it is advisable to operate on about 100 grammes, 
or about 3.2 ounces troy of soil. After this operation the matter is 
boiled in 4 or 5 times its weight of distilled water for some time ; 
water being added to replace that which is dissipated by evaporation ; 
we then filter, re-wash, and having added all the liquors, we evapor- 
ate in a capsule until the volume of the liquid is reduced to a few 
drachms. To the liquid thus concentrated we add its own bulk of 
alcohol. If the solution contains sulphate of lime it will be deposit- 
ed, and the deposite being received upon a filter and washed with 
weak alcohol, its weight is taken after having been dried and calcined. 
This salt is frequently seen deposited in the form of fine colorless 
needles on the cooling of the sufficiently concentrated solution ; but 
the addition of alcohol is always useful, because the sulphate of 
lime, which is not very soluble in water, is altogether insoluble in 
weak spirit, which on the contrary dissolves certain alkaline and 
earthy salts whose presence would interfere with the accuracy of 
the result. 

It may be matter of great moment to determine the existence and 
the quantity of phosphates contained in a soil destined for cultiva- 
tion. Although the search for phosphoric acid may perhaps require 
a certain familiarity with chemical analysis, I shall nevertheless 



SOIL ITS ANALYSIS. 211 

I 

indicate the method of procedure. It is much to be desired that en- 
lightened agriculturists should not remain strangers to manipulations 
of this kind. 

The soil to be analyzed must be first deprived of all organic mat- 
ters by calcination. After having reduced it to a very fine powder 
it is to be boiled for about an hour with three or four times its weight 
of nitric or hydrochloric acid. The solution is then diluted with 
distilled water, and filtered ; the matter which remains upon the 
filter is generally silica or alumina which has escaped the action 
of the acid. After having reduced the washings by evaporation, 
and added them to the acid liquor, ammonia in solution is poured 
in. Taking the simplest instance, the precipitate which falls upon 
the addition of this alkali may contain, 1st, phosphoric acid in union 
with the peroxide of iron and lime ; 2d. oxide of iron and of man- 
ganese ; 3d. silica. This precipitate, which is usually of a gelatin- 
ous appearance, i.s received upon a filter, well washed and dried, 
when the precipitate is readily detached from the filter. It is thrown 
into a platinum capsule which is raised to a white heat, after which 
the weight of the residue is taken. The precipitate after calcina- 
tion is thrown into a small glass matrass, and dissolved by hot hy- 
drochloric acid. If there is any silica undissolved, its quantity is 
merely estimated, if it be very small ; if it be a larger quantity, it is 
to be collected upon a filter and weighed. To the new acid solution, 
about three times its weight of alcohol is added ; the mixture is 
shaken, and pure sulphuric acid is then instilled drop by drop until 
there is no longer any precipitate. The precipitate is sulphate of 
lime, which is thrown upon a filter, where it is washed with diluted 
alcohol ; it is then dried, calcined, and the weight of the sulphate of 
lime obtained, permits us to calculate that of the lime which formed 
part of the precipitate thrown down by the ammonia in the first in- 
stance. 100 of sulphate of lime are equivalent to 41.5 of pure lime. 

The alcoholic liquor is concentrated in order to expel the spirit ; 
as it is acid, it is saturated with ammonia until a slight precipitate 
begins to be formed, which is not redissolved upon shaking the 
mixture. A few drops of the hydrosulphate of ammonia are then 
added, upon which the iron and the manganese fall in the state of 
sulphurets. As a part of the metals has been precipitated in the 
state of oxide by the ammonia added in the hydrosulpliate, it is well 
to digest for eight or ten hours, because the hydrosulphate of am- 
monia always ends by changing the metals present into sulphurets, 
which being washed, dried, and reduced to the state of oxides by 
calcination in a platinum capsule, are'weighed. 

If the first ammoniacal precipitate did not contain phosphoric acid, 
its weight ought to be reproduced by adding that of the lime to that 
of tiie metallic oxides proceeding from the calcination of the sul- 
phurets. Any loss which is noted after this, is due, if the process 
has been well conducted, to phosphoric acid, which had not been 
collected, but which has remained in the state of phosphate of am- 
monia in the liquid treated by the hydrosulphate. To determine 
with precision the presence of phosphoric acid, the liquid in question 



212 SOIL ITS ANALYSIS. 

must be evaporated to dryness, and the residue heated strongly in a 
platinum capsule. After the dissipation and decomposition of the 
ammoniacal salts, there remains watery phosphoric acid, distinguish- 
able by its powerful acid reaction, its sirupy consistence, and its 
fixity. 

By way of example, I shall give the results obtained in an analysis 
of this kind : 

P'rom the acid liquor, amtnonia threw down of: gre- troy. 

Phosphates and metallic oxides .... 8.012 

These gave of sulphate of lime .... 8.768 

Equivalent to lime ....... 3.612 

Hydrosulphate of ammonia caused a precipitate, 

which, calcined, gave of metallic oxides . . 1.620 

Lime and metallic oxides together . • 5.233 



Difference due to phosphoric acid . . 2.789 

The analysis for phosphoric acid may be simplified by employing 
a process conceived by M. Berthier, and which is founded upon the 
strong affinity of this acid for the peroxide of iron and the insolu- 
bility of the phosphate of the peroxide of iron in dilute acetic acid. 
If to a fluid containing at once phosphoric acid, lime, peroxide of 
iron, alumina, and magnesia in solution, ammonia be added, the pre- 
cipitate will contain the whole of the phosphoric acid. The acid 
will be in great part combined in the state of phosphate of iron, if the 
peroxide of iron he in cpiantity more than sufficient to neutralize it, 
a condition which must be frequently expected in an arable soil ; 
however, to make sure of this point it is well to add a certain quantity 
of the peroxide of iron to the soil which is to be analyzed. Besides 
the phosphate of iron, the precipitate may contain phosphate of lime, 
phosphate of alumina, and certainly ammoniacal magnesian phos- 
phate. Finally, with these phosphates will be found associated 
alumina and oxide of iron, the latter especially if it has been intro- 
duced in excess. The precipitate collected upon a filter and wash- 
ed, must then be treated with dilute acetic acid, which will dissolve 
the lime, the magnesia, and the excess of the oxides of iron and 
alumina, and there will remain phosphate of iron or phosphate of 
alumina, because the latter salt is as insoluble as the former in acetic 
acid. Whenever the precipitate in question, therefore, leaves a 
residue which is insoluble in vinegar, the presence of phosphoric 
acid may be inferred ; this residue may consist of basic phosphates 
of iron or alumina, or of a mixture of the two salts, and no great 
error will be committed if one hundred parts of this residue, calcined, 
be assumed as rej)resenting fifty of j)liosphoric acid. 

The presence of silica in the precipitate insoluble in acetic acid 
may, however, lead to error. To make sure that the precipitate is 
formed by a phosphate it must he redissolved in hydrochloric acid, 
and the acid solution evaporated to dryness, so as to render the silica, 
which may exist in it, insoluble. By treating the residue with hy- 
drochloric acid again, the phosphates alone will be dissolved. The 



SOIL ITS ANALYSIS. 213 

presence of phosphoric acid may otherwise be determined by treat- 
ing the phosphate of iron in solution in the way which I have already 
indicated. 

From what precedes, it must be obvious that the most carefully 
conducted chemical analysis of a soil, only leads us to the discovery 
of certain principles which exist in very small quantity, although 
their action is unquestionably useful to vegetation. As to the de- 
termination of the relative quantities of sand and loam, this rests upon 
simple washing ; and a chemist would spend his time to very little 
purpose, in seeking by means of elementary analyses to determine 
the precise composition of these substances. The finest part car- 
ried off by the water will always show properties analogous to those 
of clay ; the sand, which is generally silicious, will exhibit the char- 
acters of quartz ; and the calcareous fragments, which are mixed 
with it, will exhibit those that belong to carbonate of lime. It will 
be sufficient then in connection with the mineral constitution of ara- 
ble soils, to expose very briefly the general properties of clay or 
loam, of quartz, and of carbonate of lime, substances in fact which 
form the bases of all arable lands. Pure clay composed of silica, 
alumina, and w'ater, does not contain these substances in the state 
of simple mixture. The inquiries of M. Berthier have satisfactorily 
shown that clay is an hydrated silicate of alumina. When we re- 
move a portion of the alumina from clay, for example, by treating it 
with a strong acid, the silica which is set at liberty will dissolve in 
an alkaline solution, which would not be the case were the silica 
present in the state of quartzy sand, however fine. 

Pure clays are white, unctuous to the touch, stick to the tongue 
when dry, and when breathed upon give out an odor which is well 
known, and is commonly spoken of as the argillaceous odor. This 
property of dry clay to adhere to the tongue is owing to its avidity 
for water. It is known, in fact, that dry clay brought into contact 
with water, first swells, and finally mixes with it completely. Duly 
moistened it forms a tough and eminently plastic mass. Exposed 
to the air, moist clay, as it dries, shrinks considerably ; and if the 
drying be rapid, the mass cracks in all directions. It is to an action 
of this kind that we must ascribe the cracks and deep fissures which 
traverse our clayey soils in all directions during the continuance of 
great droughts. 

The constitutional water of clays is retained by a very powerful 
affinity, and does not separate under a red heat ; pure clay has a 
specific gravity of about 2.5 ; but the weight is frequently modified 
by the presence of foreign matter, for it contains sand, metallic 
oxides, carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, and frequently 
even combustible substances from bitumen to plumbago, all of which 
admixtures of course modify the properties which are most highly 
esteemed in clays, such as fineness, whiteness, infusibility, &c. 

Quartz is abundantly distributed throughout nature, and is met 
with in very different states in the form of transparent colorless 
crystals constituting rock crystals, as sand of different fineness ; 
finally, in masses constituting true rocks. Quartz is the silica of 



214 SOIL — ITS AN/i LYSIS. 

chemists, and a compound, according to them, of oxygen and silicon, 
in the proportion, Berzelius says, of 100 of the radical to 108 of 
o\ygcn. 

.Silica in a state of purity occurs in the form of a white powder, 
and iiaving a density of 2.1. It is infusihle in the most violent fur- 
nace, hut it not only melts in the intense heat which results from the 
comhuslion of a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas, hut it is even 
dissipated in vapor. As generally obtained, silica is held insoluble 
in water ; still, when in a state of extreme subdivision, it is soluble ; 
and then its insolubility is probably not so absolute as is generally 
supposed, for M. Payen has found notable quantities in the water of 
the Artesian well of Crenelle, and in that of the Seine. Silica ex- 
ists especially in very appreciable quantity in certain hot springs 
where the presence of an alkaline substance favors its solution ; 
the water of the hot springs of Reikum in Iceland contain about 
y7i'',rnth parts of its weight of silica ; and the thermal spring of Las 
Trincheras, near Puerto Cabcllo, deposites abundant silicious concre- 
tions. The water of this latter spring, which is at the temperature 
of 210" F., besides silica contains a quantity of sulphurated hydro- 
gen gas, and traces of nitrogen gas. Rock crystal when colorless 
and transparent may be regarded as pure silica ; in the varieties of 
quartz which mineralogists designate as chalcedony, agate, opal, &c., 
the silica is combined with different mineral substances, particularly 
oxide of iron and of manganese, alumina, lime, and water. 

Carbonate of lime, considered as rock, belongs to every epoch in 
tlie geological series, and frequently constitutes extensive masses. 
\V'l>en pure it is composed of lime 50. 3, carbonic acid 43.7 ; and its 
density is tiieu from 2.7 to 2.9. It dissolves with elfervescence 
without leaving any residue in hydrochloric or nitric acid. E.xposed 
to a red heat its acid is disengaged, and quick-lime remains. Car- 
bonate of lime is insoluble in water, but it dissolves in very consid- 
erable quantity under the influence of carbonic acid gas. Wiien 
such a solution is exposed to the air the acid escapes by degrees, 
and the carbonate is deposited, by which means those numerous 
deposites of carbonate of lime arc produced, which we see constitu- 
ting tufiis and stalactites. The solubility of carbonate of lime in 
water acidulated with carbonic acid, enables us to understand how 
])laiits should meet with this salt in the soil, inasmuch as rain-water 
always contains a little carbonic acid. 

l"he mineral substances which we have now studied, taken iso- 
latedly, would form an almost barren soil ; but by mixing them with 
discretion a soil would be obtained, presenting all the essential con- 
ditions of fertility, which depend as it would seem much less on the 
chemical constitution of the elements of the soil than on their physi- 
cal properties, such as their faculty of imbibition, their density, their 
power of conducting heat, &c. It is unquestionably by studying 
these various properties that we come to form a precise idea of the 
causes which secure or exclude the qualities we require in arable 
soils. Tills has been done very ably by M. Schiibler, and his admi- 



SPECIFIC GRAVITY OF SOIL. 215 

rable paper will remain a model of one application of the sciences 
to agriculture.* 

The researches of M. Schiibler were directed to the mineral sub- 
stances which are generally found in soils, viz : 1st. silicious sand ; 
2d. calcareous sand ; 3d. a sandy clay containing about y'ijths of 
sand ; 4th. a strong clay containing no more than about fjths of 
sand ; 5th. a still stronger clay containing no more than about yV^h 
of sand ; 6th. nearly pure clay ; 7th. chalk, or carbonate of lime in 
the pulverulent state ; 8th. humus ; 9th. gypsum ; 10th. light gar- 
den earth, black, friable, and fertile, and containing, in 100 parts, 
clay 52.4, quartzy sand 36.5, calcareous sand 1.8, calcareous earth 
2.0, humus 7.3 ; 11th. an arable soil composed of clay 51.2, silicious 
sand 42.7, calcareous sand 0.4, calcareous earth 2.3, humus 3.4 ; 
and 12th. an arable soil taken from a valley near the Jura, contain- 
ing clay 33.3, silicious sand 63.0, calcareous sand 1.2, calcareous 
earth and humus 1.2, loss 1.3. 

The oijject of these inquiries was to ascertain, 1st. the specific 
gravity of soils ; 2d. their power of retaining water ; 3d. their 
consistency; 4th. their aptitude to dry; 5th. their disposition to 
contract while drying ; 6lh. tlieir hygrometric force ; 7th. their 
power of absorbing oxygen ; 8th. their faculty of retaining heat ; 
and 9th. their capacity to acquire temperature when exposed to the 
sun's rays. 

Specific gravity of soils. The weight of soils may be compared 
in the dry and pulverulent state, or in the humid state, or the spe- 
cific gravity of the particles which enter into their composition may 
be determined. This last information is easily obtained by the fol- 
lowing method : take a common ground stopper bottle, weigh it 
stoppered and full of distilled water ; let it then be emptied, in order 
that a known quantity of the soil, in the state of powder and quite 
dry, may be introduced into it. A quantity of water is now poured 
in, and the phial is shaken to secure the disengagement of all air 
bubbles ; the phial is then filled with distilled water, and when the 
upper part has become clear the stopper is replaced ; the phial is 
then wiped dry and weighed again. The difference between the 
weight of the phial full of water plus that of the matter, and the 
weight of the phial containing the matter and the water mixed, gives 
the weight of the water displaced by this matter. Thus : 

Weight of the phial full of water 60.0 

Weight of the matter 24.0 

84.0 

Weight of the phial containing the mingled earth and water 74.4 

Dilference of water displaced 9.6 

which is the weight of the volume of water equal to that of the 
matter introduced into the phial ; we have consequently for the spe- 
cific gravity of the earth f:i=2.5, the weight of the water having 
lieen taken as 1. 

* Schiibler, .'\nnalo of Fi'onch .\;rri(ulture, vdI. xI. p. 322, 2d series. 



216 IMBIBING POWERS OF SOIL. 

This number represents the mean specific gfravity of the isolateA 
particles of the powder which has been examined. But we must 
not from this density pretend to deduce the weight of a particular 
volume of soil, a cubic foot or a cubic yard, for instance ; we should 
come to far too high a number. The weight of a given volume of 
earth must be determined immediately by ramming it into a mould 
or measure of a known capacity. 

From M. Schiibler's experiments it appears, 1st. that silicious 
and calcareous sandy soils are the heaviest of any ; 2d. that clayey 
soils are of least density ; 3d. that humus or mould is of much 
lower density than clay ; 4th. that a compound soil being generally 
by so much the heavier as it contains a larger proportion of sand, 
and so much the lighter as it contains a larger quantity of clay, of 
calcareous earth, and of humus, it is possible from the density of a 
soil to infer the nature of the principles which prevail in it. In the 
cour.se of his experiments M. ISchiibler found that artificial mixtures 
always gave higher densities than those that ought to have resulted 
from the several densities of each of the sorts of substance which 
formed the mixture. 

Imbibition of icatcr. The power which soils possess of retaining 
water or of resisting the too rapid dissipation of tiieir moisture, is 
highly important in its influence upon their fertility. This faculty 
is measured comparatively in the following manner : a given quan- 
tity of soil is taken, say from 3 to 400 grains ; it is dried until it 
ceases to lose weight ; it is then made into a thin paste and thrown 
upon a moistened filter ; when it has ceased to drop it is weighed. 
The increase of weight is plainly due to the quantity of water re- 
tained by the soil, thus : 

Weight of the drj' soil 300.0 

Weight of the moistened filter 75.0 

375.0 

Weight of the filter and moistened earth 52.5 

Water absorbed 150 

In the experiment quoted, 100 of dry earth absorbed or imbibed 
50 of water. The following table contains the result of experi- 
ments made on the iinbibing power of different soils. 

Water absorbed by 
Kind of earth. 100 parts of the earih. 

Silicious sand 25 

Gypsum 27 

Calcareous sand 29 

Sandy clay 40 

Strong clay 50 

Sandy clay 70 

Fine calcareous earth 85 

Humus 190 

Garden earth 89 

An arable soil 5i 

Another arable soil 48 

It appears, therefore, that the silicious and calcareous soils and 
the gypsum have the least aflinity for water ; the clayey soil re- 
tained by so much the more as it contained a smaller quantity of 
sand ; the fine calcareous earth retained 15 per cent, more than the 



CONSISTENCY OF SOIL. 217 

pure clay ; while the calcareous sand retained 41 per cent. less. 
This fact proves how much the state of subdivision must influence 
the physical properties of soils ; and it is easily to be understood 
that in noting the presence of calcareous matter in an arable soil 
we are carefully to indicate the form and degree of subdivision in 
which it occurs ; humus, however, is the substance which shows 
itself most greedy of moisture, and we perceive from this fact where- 
fore soils rich in this principle have so strong an affinity for water. 

Consistence, tenacity, friability of soils. The consistence or 
tenacity of soils is an important property which agriculturists indi- 
cate when they speak of soils being strong or stiff, and light, the 
amount of power expended in ploughing being taken as a measure 
of these qualities. To compare different soils under the point of 
view of their tenacity in the dry state, M. Schiibler moulded various 
kinds, duly moistened, into equal and similar parallelopipeds. 
When these solids were completely dry, he placed either extremity 
upon a fixed support, and by means of the scale of a balance hung 
exactly from the middle of the prisms, he added weights gradually 
until they gave way ; the weight, supported by each parallelepiped 
immediately before it broke, expressed its tenacity. 

In working a damp soil we have not only to overcome its force of 
cohesion, but further and principally to get the better of its adhesion 
to our implements. This consideration led M. Schtibler to estimate, 
always comparatively, the power which it is necessary to expend in 
working soils of different descriptions. As the material which 
enters into the construction of agricultural instruments is in general 
iron and wood, he did no more than ascertain the disposition of the 
soil to adhere to these two substances. In the experiments, the 
results of which we shall immediately detail, two discs were employ- 
ed, one of iron, the other of beech-wood, having equal surfaces. 
The disc was connected with the extremity of the arm of a very 
delicate balance ; it was then brought into perfect contact with the 
moist soil, and when it adhered, the opposite scale of the balance was 
loaded until the adhesion was overcome. In experiments of this 
kind it is obviously indispensable that the soil in each instance should 
have the same degree of humidity ; they were tried, consequently, 
at the point of saturation with water. 

Pure dry clay possessed the greatest tenacity, and its power was 
expressed by the number 100 ; the tenacity possessed by other mat- 
ters was then compared to that of pure clay. The following table 
exhibits the results of the two series of experiments, viz. those 
having reference to the tenacity and those having reference to the 
force of cohesion. 

19 



218 



TENACITY OF SOIL. 



Kind of soil. 


Tenacity of loil, 

that of pure clay 

being 100. 


Tenacity express- 
ed iu weight. 


Cohesion in the 
moist stale. 


Vertical adhesion 

to iron and to 

wood on a surface 

of 3.937 iiquare 

inches. 


Silicious sand 

Ciilcareous sand 

Fine calcareous earth- 
Gypsum 



0. 
5.0 
7.3 

8.7 
57.3 
68.8 
83.3 
100.0 

7.6 
33.0 
22.0 


kil. 
0. 
0. 

0.55 
0.81 
0.97 
6.36 
7.64 
9.25 
11.10 
0.84 
3.66 
2.44 


kil. 
0.17 
0.19 
0.65 
0.49 
0.40 
0.35 
0.48 
0.78 
1.22 
0.29 
0.26 
0.24 


kil.' 
0.19 
0.20 
0.71 
0..53 
0.42 
0.40 
0.52 
0.86 
1.32 
0.34 
0.28 
0.27 




Stitf clayey soil 






Earth fiom Hoffwyll . . 
Earth from the Jura - • 



M. Schiibler finds, from his experiments, that a dry soil is very 
easily worked when its tenacity does not exceed 10, that of pure 
clay being 100 in the moist state. Soils are further worked with 
ease when their adherence to a surface 3.937 inches square is re- 
presented by a weight of from 0.15 to 0.30 kil. ; i. e. from 0.380 to 
0.760, or nearly 3-d to |ths of a lb. avoird. ; the latter term passed, 
the difficulty of working increaBCs rapidly, and a very considerable 
force is required when the adherence to the same surface amounts 
to 0.70 kil. or 1.8-10 lbs. avoird. 

The tenacity of a wet soil is not, however, in the direct ratio of 
its faculty of imbibition. Loams and loose calcareous soils, which 
absorb much more water than clay, are nevertheless much less tena- 
cious ; and then water actually makes sandy soils stifFer than they 
are when dry. 

Every practical farmer knows how much more friable stiff' wet 
soils become from the eflfects of frost. The water in expanding as 
it becomes solid pushes apart the molecules of the soil, and it is to 
this action that the advantages of autumn ploughing are with justice 
ascribed. M. Schiibler found that the cohesion of a stiff" clay which 
was equal to 68 fell to 45, when before it was tried the clay was 
exposed to the frost. 

Disposition of the soil to become dry. The faculty of throwing 
off" by evaporation any excess of water with which it may be charg- 
ed, is as essential to constitute a good soil as is that of retaining 
moisture in due proportions. Those soils which throw off" too slow- 
ly the excess of moisture they have acquired during the winter, 
occasion much trouble to the husbandman. They are perfectly un- 
workable in the spring, and consequently can only be sown very 
late. M. Schiibler tried the retentive powers of the soil by the 
following method. A metallic disc, furnished with a narrow rim, 
was suspended to the arm of a balance. Over this disc, the soil to 

* The abbreviate kil. in the above table sif^iifies kiliogramme, ft weight equal to 2.2 
lbs. avoirdupois. As the weights are prinri|>ally interesting in their relations to on» 
•nother, It has not been thought necessary to reduce them to English weights. 



SHRINKING OF SOILS. 219 

be tried and previously brought to the point of saturation with moist- 
ure, was spread as evenly as possible. The weight of the disc 
thus charged was noted, and it was weighed anew, after having 
been kept for four hours in a temperature of 18.75° cent. (65.75° 
Fahr.) The weight of the water lost by evaporation was obtained 
by a second weighing; the complete desiccation of the soil was then 
completed in the stove. The following is the detail of one opera- 
tion : 

Weight of the moist earth 310 

Weight after four hours' exposure to the air 2G0 

Water evaporated 50 

Weight of the moist earth 310 

Weight after complete desiccation 200 

Whole quantity of water contained in the soil tried 110 

Thus 100 of water of imbibition lost 45.5 during exposure to the 
air for 4 hours at a temperature of about 66° Fahr. A more se- 
verely accurate method might readily be contrived, but that employ- 
ed by M. Schiibler appears sufficient for ordinary purposes. His 
results, in regard to the different kinds of soil he tried, are these : 

100 pans of the water 
cotUained it) the soil lose 
Kinds of soil. in the course of 4 hours 

at 66 deg. Fahr. 

Silicious sand 88.4 

Calcareous sand 75.9 

Gypsum 71.7 

Sandy clay 52.0 

Stitfishclay 45.7 

Stirt'clay •. 34.9 

Pure clay 31.9 

Calcareous soil 28.0 

Humus 20.5 

Garden earth 24.3 

Arable soil of Hoffvvyll 32.0 

Arable soil of the Jura 40.1 

Of all the substances examined, sand and gypsum are obviously 
those which allow the water to pass off most rapidly by evaporation. 
The calcareous or chalky soil again has a high retentive power ; 
but it varies much in different instances, apparently in consequence 
of different degrees of fineness ; it is however surpassed by humus, 
and the garden soil which was tried. Humus is therefore at the 
head of the list of substances in reference to retentive properties. 

All soils shrink more or less in drying, and form cracks, in the 
way already indicated ; the shrinking has been estimated by means 
of prisms of soils measured in the moist state, and after being dried 
in the shade : 

Kinds of soil. 100 parts cube 

shrink to. 

Carbonate of lime in fine powder 950 

Sandy clay 940 

Stifiishclay 911 

Stitfclay 886 

Pure clay 817 

II unms 846 

Garden earth 851 

Arable soil of Hoffwyll 880 

Arable soil of Jura 905 



220 



HYGROMETRIC POWER OF SOILS. 



Gypsum, silicious, and calcareous sand do not appear in this table, 
because they do not shrink in drying. The humus appears to have 
shrunk the most ; and dry humus is liable to swell in the same pro- 
portion when it is moistened. This property explains the obvious 
elevation of certain turfy or mossy soils at the period of the rains. 

Hygrometric properly of soils. Agriculturists allow, that those 
soils which have the property of attracting moisture from the atmo- 
sphere are generally among the most fertile. This hygrometric 
property must not be confounded with that in virtue of which moist- 
ure is retained. It appears to depend especially on the porousness 
of a soil, and, probably, also, in some degree, on the deliquescent 
salts which it contains, even in very small quantity. Davy was 
disposed to regard the hygrometric property of soils as a certain 
index of their good quality; and the experiments of M. Schlibler 
upon the point, all tend to confirm the accuracy of this view. In 
M. Schiibler's experiments, the increase of weight of dry soils was 
ascertained by exposing them for a certain time in an atmosphere 
kept at the point of saturation with moisture, and at the same tem- 
perature, between 60° and 65° Fahr. 



Silicions sand 

Calcareous sand 

Gypsum 

Lipht clay 

Stiffish clay 

Strong clay 

Pure clay 

Chalky soil in fine powder 

Humus 

Garden earth 

Arable soil of HotTwyll . . . 
.•Vrable soil of J ura 



500 centigrammes, or 77.165 grains tr 

upon a GUI-face of 36,IX)0 millimetres, 

incbes, absorbed in — 



77. 165 ;f rains troy, of soil, spread 
s. or 141.48 square 



Grains. 



.1.54 
0.077 
1.617 
1.925 
2.310 
2.849 
2.00-2 
6.160 
2.G9.5 
1.232 
1.078 



Grains. 


.231 

o.(r?7 

2.002 
2.310 
2.772 
3.234 
2.387 
7.469 
3.465 
1.771 
1.463 





.231 
0.077 
2.156 
2.618 
3.080 
3.696 
2.695 
8.470 
3.850 
1.771 
1.540 



Grains. 


.231 
0.077 
2.156 
2.695 
3.157 
3.773 
2.695 
9240 
4.004 
1.771 
1.540 



From the results comprised in the preceding table, we may con- 
clude, first, that the faculty of absorbing lessens as soils acquire 
moisture ; second, that humns is tlio most hygrometric of all the 
substances examined ; third, that the clays which absorb the largest 
quantity of moisture are those which contain the smallest proportion 
of sand; and fourth, that silicious sand and gypsum do not absorb 
moisture in any appreciable quantity. 

Absorption of oxygen gas by arable soils. Humboldt had already 
observed, before the year 1703, that argillaceous soils, the lydian 
stone, certain schists, and humus, deprived the air of its oxygen. 
He had also observed that the sides of the large cavities dug in the 
salt mines of Saltzburg, absorbed this gas, and thus rendered the 
stagnant atmosphere of the workings irrespirable and incapable of 
supporting combustion. Finally, this illustrious observer had satis- 



ABSORPTION OF OXYGEN BY SOILS. 221 

factorily ascertained, at the same period, that earth taken from the 
galleries of these mines, only became fertile after having been ex- 
posed to the atmosphere for a considerable length of time. I have 
quoted these curious observations because they are, so far as I know, 
the first which established the necessity of the presence of oxygen 
in the interstices of the soil, or, as M. Humboldt then said, and, in- 
deed, as may still be maintained, the utility of a previous oxidation 
of the soil. 

All our agricultural facts, indeed, confirm this view of the necessity 
of air in the interstices of the soil that is destined for the growth of 
vegetables. When, by ploughing very deeply, for example, we 
bring up a portion of the subsoil into the arable layer, in order to in- 
crease its thickness, we always lessen the fertility of the ground for 
a time ; in spite of the action of manures, and of any treatment we 
may adopt, a certain time must elapse before the subsoil can pro- 
duce an advantageous eifect ; it is absolutely necessary that it have 
been exposed to the atmospheric influences, and it is then, only that 
deep ploughing, which gives the arable layer a greater thickness, 
pays completely for the expense it has occasioned. 

I am disposed to ascribe the absorption of oxygen gas by clayey 
soils, to the oxide of iron, which they almost always contain, and 
which is in the minimum state of oxidation, when the clay lies at a 
certain depth. In the performance of some soundings in a tertiary 
soil of thC' department of the lower Rhine, which I performed in 
1822, I had occasion to observe that the clays brought up white by 
the borer, very speedily became blue by exposure to the air ; and 
that in gaining color they condensed oxygen. I propose returning 
upon this fact to show the important part which this simple super- 
oxidation probably plays in the amelioration of soils.* 

M. Schiibler, again, has studied the action of oxygen gas upon the 
component parts of arable soils, and, according to him, the absorp- 
tion of this gas cannot be doubted ; it is very trifling in connection 
with sand and gypsum, very decided as regards clay, loam, and 
humus. As M. de Humboldt and M. de Saussure had already done, 
M. Schiibler observed humus to change a portion of the oxygen 
which it fixed, into carbonic acid ; but, in general, the other sub- 
stances, or soils, or elements of soils, upon which he experimented, 
appeared to absorb the oxygen by the intermedium of the protoxide 
of iron, from which they are never altogether free. Besides this 
cause, due to the superoxidation of a metal, M. Schiibler thinks that 
a certain portion of the oxygen disappears by condensation within 
the pores of some soils ; and in support of his opinion he appeals to 
the admirable observations of M. de Saussure, on the condensation 
of the gases by porous bodies. Starting from the fact that the roots 
of plants require the presence of oxygen in order to thrive, he 

* Anslin proved, that during the oxidation of metallic iron under water, there is a 
constant production of ammonia. Certain experiments commenced some time afjo, and 
which I still continue, will establish in the most precise manner, as I hope, the fact 
that tYiis formation of ammonia likewise takes place during the passage of the protox- 
ide of iron to the state of hydrated peroxide. The theoretical conclusions deducible 
from this fact, and the economic applications which may tlow from it, must be obvious. 

19* 



222 



CAPACITY OF SOILS FOR HEAT. 



ascribes a greater power to the gases compressed or condensed 
within the interstices of the soil. But the action of the air upon the 
roots of vegetables is readily conceivable in soils of a loose nature, 
especially if they have been sufficiently worked, without the necessity 
of having recourse to such an explanation. 

Capacity of soils for heat. The quantity of heat which a soil will 
receive, retain, or throw off in a given time, depends upon the con- 
ducting power which it possesses. M. Schiibler endeavored to 
measure this power comparatively by measuring the rates of cooling. 
In a vessel of the capacity of 595 cubic centimetres, or 234.2 cubic 
inches, filled with the substance to be tried, a thermometer was 
placed, with its bulb in the centre. The temperature having been 
brought up to 02.5° C, (144.5" Fahr.,) the time was noted which 
each substance required to fall to 21.2° C, or about 70° Fahr., the 
temperature of the surrounding air being 16.2° C, or about 61' Fahr. 



Kind ofaoil. 


Power of retaining heat, 
that of calcareous saud 
beiuff 100. 


Time which 234.2 cubic 
inches oC soil required 
to cool from 14 1= to 70® 
Fahr., the temperalura 
of the surroundiii^ air 
being about 61 ° Fahr. 




100.0 

73.2 
76.9 
71.1 
68.4 
66.7 
61.8 
49.0 
64.8 
70.1 
74.3 


h. m. 

3.30 

3.27 

2.34 . 

2.41 

2.30 

2.24 

2.19 

2.10 

1.43 

2.16 

2.27 

0.36 




















Arable soil of Hoffwyll . . . 
Arable soil of the Jura 



The general observations which these experiments suggest, are 
that, for equal volumes, calcareous or silicious sand possesses greater 
powers of retaining heat than any of the other substances tried. 
This fact explains the high temperature and the dryness which 
sandy soils maintain even during the night in summer. Humus is 
obviously the substance which possesses the highest conducting 
powers. 

Degrees in which soils become heated wider exposure to the sun. 
There is no one who has not had occasion to observe the high tem- 
perature which bodies acquire when exposed to the rays of the 
bright sun. There are some, such as dry sand, slates, and certain 
colored rocks, which become burning hot. It is by the heat of the 
sun that the soil, before it is shaded by the leaves and stems of plants, 
rises in temperature, and throws off the excess of moist'ire which it 
had imbibed in the winter. Agriculturists all know how different 
the degree in which this heating takes place, even in soils that are 
close to one another. A light-colored, moist, clayey soil will heat 
much less than a dark-colored, calcareous, or sandy soil. The dif- 



CLASSIFICATION OF SOILS. 



223 



ferences in the heat acquired in various soils depend, 1st, on the 
state of their surface ; 2d, on their composition ; 3d, on the quantity 
of water which they contain ; and, 4th, on the angle of incidence of 
the sun's rays. M. Schiibler, by a method which is far from being 
unobjectionable, but which may be excused, considering the diffi- 
culties of the subject, measured the temperature acquired by different 
soils exposed to the sun for the same length of time, and in circum- 
stances as nearly alike as possible ; the numbers obtained are given 
in the following table : 




Piliciows sand, yellowish gray . • • 
Calcareous sand, whitish gray- -- - 

Bright gypsum, whitish gray 

Poor clay, yellowish 

Stift'clay.... 

Argillaceous earth, yellowish gray 

Pure clay, bluish gray . . 

Calcareous earth, white 

Humus, blackish gray 

Garden earth, blackish gray 

Arable earth of Hoffwyll, gray 

Arable earth of the Jiua, gray 



Highest temperature acquired by the upper 
layer, the mean temperature of the alnio- 
sphero being 25° C. (77° F.} 



The soil moist, de- 


The soil dry, de- 


grees centigrade. 


grees centigrade. 


37.25 (99° F.) 


44.75 (112=.5F.) 


37.38 


44.50 


36.25 


43.62 


36.75 


44.12 


37.25 


44.50 


37.38 


44.02 


37.50 


45.00 


35.63 (96°. IF.) 


43.00 (109 °. 4 F.') 


39.75 (103 °. 5 F.) 


47.37 


37.50 


45.25 


36.88 


44.25 


36.50 


43.75 



In comparing the circumstances which concur in assisting the 
action of the sun's rays in raising the temperature of the soil, it 
appears that the color and moistness of the soil and the angle of 
incidence of the sun's rays are the most influential ; they may occa- 
sion differences in the temperature acquired of from 14° to 15° C, 
(25° to 27° F.) The nature of the surface and the composition of 
the soil are far from producing such marked differences ; although, 
according to M. Schiibler, the effect of inclination is very decided, 
and may occasion a difference to the amount of 25° C, (45° F.) 

CLASSIFICATION OF SOILS. 

Agriculturists class soils according to their fertility, and the 
cropping which they will stand to advantage. In practice two grand 
divisions have been adopted : strong soils, and light soils ; every 
soil belongs wholly or in part to one or other of these divisions. 

In strong soils clay is the predominating element ; in light soils it 
is sand which prevails. The first are stiff, little permeable, and 
slow in drying ; the second are loose, dry speedily and readily, are 
permeable, and less difficult to labor. Humus always adds to the 
qualities of these two kinds of soil, though possessed of properties 
50 opposite ; but its utility is especially remarkable in argillaceous 
or clayey soils, the extreme stiffness of which it diminishes. 



224 SOILS. 

Stiff or strong soils share in the advantages and disadvantages 
peculiar to clay ; they absorb a great deal of moisture, and they do 
not dry readily, retaining obstinately a considerable quantity of wa- 
ter. The humus which they contain, and the manures which are 
spread upon them in the course of cultivation, remain with them for 
a long time, preserved as it were from the too active agency of at- 
mospiieric influences ; the fertilizing power of these substances is 
further rarely interfered with by too great a degree of dryness in the 
soil. Nevertheless, in very wet seasons, and in years of extraordi- 
nary drought, the advantages which I have enumerated disappear. 
In wet seasons clay lands become immoderately humid, sometimes 
they approach the state of mere puddle ; and on the contrary, under 
severe and long-continued drought, they become so hard tiiat the 
roots of vegetables can no longer penetrate them, and then they 
crack in all directions, and the roots perish for want of being prop- 
erly covered. I might add that severe frost is the cause of etfects 
disadvantageous in the same degree ; so that very stiff c»ays are 
liable to the same bad effects under the influence of two causes dia- 
metrically opposed : the great heat of summer and the severe cold 
of winter. 

In such soils all agricultural operations are often impracticable ; 
changed into a liquid mud, neither horse nor plough can be put upon 
them, or baked into a mass having the hardness of stone, the share 
will not penetrate them. 

Light soils rarely accumulate an excess of moisture in their inter- 
stices, so that they are liable to suffer under want of rain of even 
short continuance. They are worked with infinitely greater ease, 
and at much less expense ; vegetation upon them is quicker, and 
harvests earlier ; but manure is less profitable than in clayey soils, 
because the rains dissolve and carry it away. 

The detects of these two kinds of soils are precisely of a nature 
to compensate one another, and it is in fact by a mixture, or that 
■which is equivalent to a mixture of these two extreme kinds of soil, 
that those lands are formed which are admitted to be the best adapted 
to cultivation, and the most fertile of all. Messrs. Thaer and Einhoff, 
in submitting to mechanical analysis an immense number of arable 
soils, and in studying at the same time the system of culture best 
adapted to these soils, and to their relative fertilities, have given us 
results of great importance, and which may be made the basis of a 
practical classification of arable soils.* 

An argillaceous or clayey soil properly so called, generally con- 
tains about 40 per cent, of sand. If the quantity of sand be less 
than this, the crop from such a soil will be more or less i)recarious, 
and the tenacity will be such, that considerable difficulty will be ex- 
perienced and necessary expense incurred in working it ; such a 
clayey soil, (iiaving at least 40 per cent, of sand,) when it contains 
a sufficient quantity of humus and is properly treated, may be regard- 
ed as favorable for wheat. Barley succeeds better than wheat, when 

* Thaer'i Bational Principles of Agriculture, (in French,) vol. li. p. 115. 



CLASSIFICATION. 225 

the quantity of sand is as low as 30 per cent. With less than 30 
per cent, oats will thrive. Wheat may still be advantageously cul- 
tivated upon lands that contain from 40 to 50 per cent, of sand ; 
beyond this term, when the soil contains from 50 to 60 per cent, of 
sand, it is more advantageous to grow barley. Such a soil will not 
be completely pulverized by reiterated ploughing, as will that which 
contains a larger proportion of silicious matter, and it does not be- 
come hard and cracked under drought like lands that are more 
essentially clayey, because it retains a sufficiency of moisture ; it is 
equally well adapted for trefoil of all kinds, for tubers, for plants 
with tap roots, and for many other crops of great marketable value, 
such as cabbage, flax, tobacco, &c. It is almost always accessible, 
a circumstance which allows of the greatest care being bestowed 
upon the crops which are raised upon it. In soils which yield on 
washing from 60 to 80 per cent, of sand, we cannot reckon securely 
on the success of wheat. At 70 of sand, it ceases to be well adapted 
to the cultivation of this grain, except with especial precautions ; but 
it is still well adapted to barley, and it is in such a soil especially 
that rye succeeds best. 

Land with such a dose of sand is always easily labored, but it is 
more apt to be overrun by foul weeds than a soil that is decidedly 
argillaceous. Manures are speedily consumed in it for the reason 
already given ; it is, therefore, advantageous to manure such land 
frequently, laying on less dung at a time. A soil having 75 per cent. 
of sand, is qualified by Thaer as an oat soil, and even up to 85 per 
cent, of sand it may be regarded as suitable to this grain ; this term 
passed, nothing but rye or buckwheat ought to be sown upon it, 
and that only after it has had a sufficient dose of manure. The re- 
iterated ploughings which some of these sandy soils require to get 
rid of the foul weeds which rush up in such quantities upon them, 
sometimes render them so open that rye will not succeed. The best 
course is then to lay them down in grass, and allow them to become 
consolidated by rest. 

It is extremely difficult, at least in this climate of ours, to make 
any thing of soils that contain 90 per cent, of sand ; in times of 
drought they become true moving sands. As we have already shown, 
calcareous matter may replace silicious sand in the part which it 
plays in an arable soil ; like sand, calcareous matter tends to de- 
stroy the strong cohesion of the particles of clay : but it appears that 
chalk or lime, especially when it is in a state of minute subdivision, 
besides this effect, really contributes to the amelioration of wheat 
lands. 

The following table comprises the results obtained by Thaer and 
Einhoff. I must observe, however, and from causes which have 
been already explained as influencing the determination of the humus, 
that this substance is evidently estimated at much too high a figure 
in several of these analyses, which deserve to be made anew under 
the precautions that are now familiarly known. 



226 



SOIL. 



Soils according to com- 
position. 



Clay with humus 

ditto 

ditto 

Marly soil 

Light soil, with humus- 
Sandy soil, humus 

Argillaceous land 

Marly soil 

Argillaceous land 

Stitfer argillaceous land 

Clay 

Stiii' argillaceous land- • 

ditto 

Sandy clay 

ditto 

Clayey sand 

ditto 

Sandy soil 

ditto 

ditto 



Usually designated. 



Rich wheat land 

ditto 

ditto 

ditto 

Meadow land 

Rich barley land 

Good w;heat land 

Wheatland 

ditto 

ditto 

ditto 

Barley land of the 1st class 
ditto 3d class 

ditto ditto 

Oat land 

• ditto 

Rye land 

ditto 

ditto 

ditto 







■^ 








ec 












to 


B 





a 


O 


m 


8 


B 






►J 
4 


11. .5 


74 


10 


81 


6 


4 


8.5 


79 


10 


4 


6.5 


40 


22 


36 


4 


14 


49 


10 


27 


20 


1)7 


3 


10 


.58 


:iG 


2 


4 


.W 


30 


12 


2 


60 


:{8 







48 


M 




2 


68 


30 




2 


:w 


(iO 




2 


X3 


fi.5 




2 


28 


70 




2 


2:1.. 5 


i:> 




1.5 


18..') 


ao 




1.5 


14 


8.5 




1 


9 


90 




1 


4 


95 




0.75 


2 


97.5 




0.5 



Schwertz has given a summary of the opinions of Thaer upon the 
value of different soils from an eminently practical point of view. 
Agreeing with this distinguished agriculturist, that it is well to judge 
of the soil by its produce, he also forms a scale of comparison after 
the different kinds of grain, taking as extreme terms wheat and bar- 
ley, the first succeeding in bad argillaceous soils, the second still 
growing in sandy soils of the poorest description. In these extreme 
or boundary soils, wheat and barley succeed very indifferently in- 
deed ; but between the two extremes are comprised every variety of 
soil which results from the fusion of the strongest or stiffest with the 
lightest soils, from the most tenacious clay up to loose sand. In 
these mixed soils of intermediate qualities, wheat and barley gradu- 
ally approach one another, taking the place successively of barley, 
oats, and buckwheat, until they meet in the middle of the scale in 
a kind of neutral soil, upon which every variety of grain may be 
grown. 

Schwertz arranged his scale in the following manner :* 

0. Moving sand 0. Stiff clay. 

1. Rye land 1. Wheatland. 

2. Rye and buckwheat land 2. Wheat and oat land. 

3. Rye, buckwheat, and oat land 3. Wheat, oat, and barley land. 

4. Rye, oat, and small barley land 4. Wheat and large barley land. 

5. Wheat, r>'e, barley, and oat land. 

The species of soil which suit these different crops are : 

1. Light dry sand 1. Cold stiff clay. 

2. Moist, very slightly argillaceous sand- • .2. A lighter moist clay. 

3. Argillaceous sand 3. A warm dry clay. 

' 4. Sandy clay 4. Rich clay. 

5. Clay. 

* Precepts of Practical Agriculture, (in French,) p. 49. 



CLASSIFICATION. 237 

The preceding considerations are more than sufficient to give a 
precise idea of what is to be understood in regard to the composition 
of arable soils. Nevertheless, vi^ith a view to making the subject 
more complete, I shall quote a few of the analyses of arable soils, 
published by different chemists at a time when a certain importance 
was attached to researches of this kind. I may remark generally, 
that from the whole of the analyses of good wheat lands which have 
hitherto been made, it appears that carbonate of lime enters in con- 
siderable quantity into their composition ; and theory, in harmony 
with practice, tends to show that it is advantageous to have this 
earthy salt as a constituent in the manures which are put upon soils 
that contain little or no lime. 

Analysis of a soil under the variety of rape called colza, by M. 
Berthier : 

Silica 78.2 

Alumina 7.1 

Peroxide of iron 4.4 

Lime 1.9 

Magnesia '. 0-8 

Carbonic acid 1.4 

Water •. 5.8 

99.6 

This soil was dried in the air, after having been reduced to pow- 
der ; it lost 34 per cent, by drying. It is remarkable that it con- 
tains no trace of organic matter, the rather as it was held favorable 
for colewort. M. Berthier believes that this soil would gain in fer- 
tility by the addition of a certain quantity of calcareous matter, and 
M. Cordier* explains its inability to grow grain to advantage from 
the deficiency in lime. The stalk of the grain grown in this soil is 
weak, especially in wet seasons, and the seed is particularly apt to 
shake out when it is ripe. 

If the presence of lime in a wheat soil is a guaranty against loss 
by shaking in harvest, M. Berthier's analysis is still far from proving 
that the presence of lime in a soil is indispensable, inasmuch as 
beautiful wheat crops are grown in the neighborhood of Lisle without 
lime. In proof of this fact, I shall here cite the analysis of one of 
the most fertile soils in the world, the black soil of Tchornoizem, 
which Mr. Murchison informs us constitutes the superficies of the 
arable lands comprised between the 54th and 57th degrees of north 
latitude, along the left bank of the A^olga as far as Tcheboksar, from 
Nijni to Kasan, and stretching over a still more extensive district 
upon the Asiatic side of the Ural mountains. Mr. Murchison is of 
opinion that this land is a submarine deposite formed by the accumu- 
lation of sands rich in organic matters. The Tchornoizem is com- 
posed of black particles mixed with grains of sand ; it is the best 
soil in Russia for wheat and pasturage ; a year or two of fallow will 
suffice to restore it to its former fertility after it has been exhausted 
by cropping ; it is never manured. 

M. Payen found in this black and fertile soil : 

* On the Agriculture of French Flanders, p. 232, (in French.) 



228 



Organic matter 6.95 | 

Silica 71.5G 

Alumina 11-40 

Oxide of iron 5.62 

Lime 0.80 

Magnesia 1.22 

Alkaline clilorides 1.21 

Pliosplionc acid a trace. 

Loss 1.24 



containing 2.45 pel 
cent, of azote. 



100.00 
Bergman gives the following as the composition of a fertile soil in 
Sweden : 



Carbonate of lime •• •' 30 

Gravel 30; 

Silicinus sand 26j-Clay. 

Alumina 



30) 
26 V( 



Several fertile soils of Senegal, examined by M. Laugier, con- 
tained : 



Rawei. 

Silicious sand and silica 87.0 

Alumina 3.6 

Oxide of iron 3.4 

Carbonate of lime trace 

Organic matter and water 4.4 

Loss 1.6 

100.0 





LOCALITIES. 






)oiikitt. 


Diague. 


Roso. 


N'Dick. 


72.0 


89.0 


78.0 


91.0 


10.0 


3.0 


7.0 


1.8 


8.0 


3.6 


5.2 


3.0 


trace 


0.5 


trace 


0.5 


10.0 


3.6 


9.0 


3.0 


" 


0.3 


0.8 


0.7 



M. Plagne, who has studied the agriculture of the Coromandel 
coast, divides the soils he met with there into argillaceous, or clayey, 
sandy, and mixed, and gives their several compositions as follows : 

Ar^illaceouB. Sandy. 

Silica 22.0 82.0 

Alumina 59.0 6.5 

Carbonate of lime 3.5 3.5 

Oxide of iron 2.5 4.0 

Pho.sphate of magnesia " } g q 

Sulphate of lime "J 

Azotized orf;anic matter 5.0 " 

Waterandloss • 8^ 2.0 

100.0 100.0 

The soils in which the tea-plant is grown in Assam and China, 
have been examined by Mr. Piddington;* they contain respectively : 

Chinese soil. Assam soil. 

Silica and sand 76.0 84.8 

Alumina 9-0 4.5 

Oxideofiron 9.9 7.0 

Pho.sphate and sulphate of lime l-O truces 

Organic matter 1-0 1.5 

Water 3^ 2.3 

99.9 100.1 

Sir Humphrey Davy found the various soils most generally culti- 
vated in England, to have the following composition : 

♦ Robinson, Account of Assam, p. 130. 



CLASSIFICATION. 



239 





t3 






i 






_ 


P 








Diitnctj. 


is 
II 


i 

CQ 


1 

< 


1 

c: 




-S 


■S3 


1, 




i 

3 


Remarkt. 




m " 






O 




o 


° 


3 








County of Kent 


66.3 


5.2 


3.3 


4.8 


0.8 


1.2 


8.0 


05 


4.9 


5.0 


4 Rich soil, 
} under hops. 


Norfolk 


88.9 


1.7 


1.2 


7.0 




0.3 


0.6 




0.3 




( Ditto under 
( turnips. 


Middlesex 


60.0 


12.8 


11.6 


11.2 






4.4 








i Very good 
) soil, wheat. 


Worcestershire 


GO.O 


16.4 


140 


5.6 




1.2 


2.8 








\ Very fertile 
\ soil. 


ValeoftheTeviot 


83.3 


7.0 


6.8 


0.7 




0.8 


1.4 








Good soil. 


Salisbury 


9.1 


12.7 


64 


57.3 




1.8 


12.7 




" 




< E.tcellent 
\ grazing soil. 



M. Gasparin has published analyses of the soils of the south of 
France. Instead of destroying the humus and organic matter by 
calcination, as Davy and the generality of analysts did, M. Gasparin 
dissolved out the humus by means of a strong alkaline solution. 
This method of procedure is, however, at least as liable to objection 
as the other. 



Districts. 


Humus. 


Calca- 

matler. 


Clay. 


Sand. 


Remarks. 


From Thor (Vaucluse) 

Alluvium of the Rhone 

From Palus, near Orange 

Old deposite of the Rhone 

From the plains near Orange 
Neighborhood of Auch 


7.5 

3.4 

2.5 

5.0 

4.0 
1.5 


92.5 

2.3 

55.5 

32.5 

50.0 
3.5 


6.0 

53.5 

43.5 

56.0 

48.0 
73.0 


1.5 

42.7 

1.0 

11.5 

2.0 
23.0 


Middling wheat soil. 
< Well adapted for niad- 
j der, wheat & lucern. 

Bad wheat land. 
) Good wheat land, very 
( indiflerent lor madder. 

Ditto, bad for madder. 



There is an important element which must always be taken into 
the account in estimating the value of soils, no matter what their 
special composition ; this element is their depth, or thickness. In 
running a deepish furrow in a cultivated field, we generally distin- 
guish at a glance the depth of the superficial layer, which is com- 
monly designated as the mould or vegetable earth ; this is a layer 
generally impregnated with humus, and looser and more friable than 
the subsoil upon which it rests. The thickness of this superficial 
layer is extremely variable ; it is frequently no more than about 3 
inches ; but it is also encountered of every depth from 3 or 4 to 12 
or 13 inches. It must be held an exceptional and unusual case when 
it has a depth of 3 feet or more. Nevertheless we do meet with 
collections of vegetable soil of great depth, deposited by rivers, 
washed down into the bottoms of valleys, or accumulated on the 
surface, as in the virgin forests or vast prairies of America. Depth 
of mould, or vegetable soil, is always advantageous ; it is one of the 

20 



230 DEPTH OF SOIL. 

best conditions to successful agriculture. If we have depth of soil, 
and the roots of our plants do not penetrate sufficiently to derive 
benefit from the fertility that lies below, we can always, by working 
a little deeper, bring up the inferior layers to the surface, and so 
make them concur in fertilizing the soil. And, independently of 
this great advantage, a deep soil suffers less either from excess or 
deficiency of moisture ; the rain that falls has more to moisten, and 
is therefore absorbed in greater quantity than by thin soils, and, 
once imbibed, it remains in store against drought. 

The layer upon which the vegetable earth rests, is the subsoil, 
which it is of importance to examine, inasmuch as the qualities, and, 
consequently, the value of an arable soil, have always a certain rela- 
tion with the nature and properties of this subjacent stratum. Fre- 
quently, and especially in hilly countries, the mineral constitution of 
the subsoil is the same as that of the soil, and any difference that 
the former may present is owing especially to the presence of humus, 
and to the looser condition which results from the growth of vege- 
tables, from ploughing, &c., and not from atmospheric influences. 
By deep ploughing done cautiously, the thickness of the layer of 
arable land may be increased at the expense of the subsoil, and, 
when plenty of manure can be commanded, the operation will go on 
with considerable rapidity. Still it is maintained, and indeed in 
many cases it is unquestionable, that the soil loses temporarily some 
portion of its fertility by the introduction of a certain quantity of the 
subsoil, and that, under ordinary circumstances, several years elapse 
before any amelioration becomes perceptible. 

In plains, in high table-lands, the analogy, in point of constitution, 
between the soil and subsoil is not so constant. In such situations 
the arable land is frequently an alluvial deposite proceeding from the 
destruction or disintegration of rocks situated at a great distance. 
When the superior strata possess properties that are entirely differ- 
ent from the subsoils, it may be understood how the vegetable earth 
may be improved by the addition of a certain dose of the subsoil, and 
this is the case in which the amelioration is the least expensive. 
The impermeability of the subsoil is one grand cause of the too great 
humidity of a cultivated soil. A strong soil, very tenacious through 
the excess of clay which it contains, has its disadvantageous proper- 
ties considerably lessened, if the subsoil upon which it rests is sandy, 
1st, from the evident amelioration which must result from an ad- 
mixture of the two layers, and, next, because it is always a positive 
advantage in having a soil which has a strong affinity for water 
superposed upon a subsoil which is extremely permeable. The in- 
verse situation is scarcely less desirable ; a light friable soil will have 
greater value if it lies upon a bottom of a certain consistency, and 
capable of retaining moisture ; with this condition, however, that the 
clayey layer shall not be too uneven in its surface, that it shall not 
present great hollows in which water may collect and stagnate ; an 
impermeable subsoil, to act beneficially in such circumstances, must 
have a sufficient inclination to admit of its draining itself. The most 
eesential distinction, then, in regard to the nature of subsoils is, into 



SOILS IN EEFERENCE TO CLIMATE. 231 

permeable and impermeable. Acquainted with the nature of vege- 
table earth, it is easy to judge of the advantages or disadvantages 
which will be presented by subsoil having the faculty of retaining or 
of permitting the escape of moisture. 

In some situations, particularly upon the slopes of hills, the layer 
of arable land is of very limited thickness, and it is not uncommon 
to see it lying upon rocks of the most dense description, such as 
granite, porphyry, basalt, &c. ; in such circumstances the substrata 
are unavailable, and there is nothing for it then in the way of ame- 
lioration except to transport directly vegetable earth from other 
situations. Mica schist is perhaps the least intractable rocky sub- 
soil ; the plough often penetrates it, and in the long run it becomes 
mingled with the arable layer. It is generally agreed that limestone 
rocks form a less unfavorable substrate. There are in fact some 
calcareous rocks which absorb water, and crumble away, and the 
roots of various plants, such as cinquefoin, penetrate them deeply ; 
but there are many limestone rocks so hard that they resist all de- 
composing action for a very long period of time. 

The qualities which we have thus far sought to determine in soils, 
do not depend solely on their mineral constitution or their physical 
properties, nor yet on those of the subsoils which support them. 
These qualities to become obvious require that the soils shall be 
placed in certain conditions which must not be left out of the reck- 
oning. Such are those of the climate enjoyed and of the position 
more or less inclined to the horizon in one direction or another. 
The precepts which we have laid down are especially applicable to 
the arable lands of Germany, England, and France. But in gener- 
alizing it would be proper to say that clayey lands answer better in 
dry climates, and light sandy soils in countries where rains are fre- 
quent. Ivirwan made this remark long ago in connection with nu- 
merous analyses of wheat lands. The conclusion to which this 
celebrated chemist came was this, that the soil best adapted for wheat 
in a rainy country must be viewed in a very different way with refer- 
ence to a country where the rains are less frequent. The fertility 
of light sandy soils is notoriously in intimate relationship with the 
frequent fall of rain. At Turin, for example, where a great deal of 
rain falls, a soil which contains from 77 to 80 per cent, of sand is 
still held fertile, while In the neighborhood of Paris, where it rains 
less frequently than at Turin, no good soil contains more than 50 per 
cent, of sand. A light sandy soil which in the south of France 
would only be of very inferior value, presents real advantages in the 
moist climate of England.* Irrigation supplies the place of rain, 
and in those countries or situations where recourse can be had to it, 
the question in regard to the constitution of soils loses nearly the 
whole of its interest. Land that can be irrigated has only to be 
loose and permeable in order to have the whole of the fertility de- 
veloped which climate and manure can confer. Sandy deserts are 
sterile because it never rains. Upon the sandy downs of the coasts 

* Sinclair's Practical Agriculture. 



232 SOILS IN REFERENCE TO CL13IATE. 

of the Southern Ocean, a brilliant vegetation is seen along the course 
of the few rivers which traverse them ; all beyond is dust and ster- 
ility. I have seen rich crops of maize gathered upon the plateau of 
the Andes of Quito in a sand that was nearly moving, but which 
was abundantly and dexterously irrigated. 

A sandy and little coherent soil is by so much the more favorably 
situated as it lies in the least elevated parts of a district ; it is then 
less exposed to the effects of drought ; any considerable degree of 
inclination is unfavorable to such a soil, inasmuch as the rain drains 
off too quickly, and because it is itself apt to be washed away. It 
is to prevent this action of the rains, that the abrupt slopes of hills 
are generally left covered with trees ; and the deplorable conse- 
quences which have followed from cutting down the woods in moun- 
tainous countries are familiarly known. 

Strong soils, on the contrary, are better placed in opposite cir- 
cumstances. A certain inclination is peculiarly advantageous to 
them ; and, indeed, in working clayey lands that stand upon a dead 
level, we are careful to ridge them in such a way as to favor the 
escape of water. 

In countries situated beyond the tropics, where consequently 
shadows are cast in the same direction throughout the whole year, 
the exposure of a piece of land is by no means matter of indiffer- 
ence. In our hemisphere, the lands which have a considerable in- 
clination and a northern exposure, receive less heat and light, and 
remain longer wet than those that slope towards the south ; vegeta- 
tion consequently is less forward upon the former than the latter 
lands : but, on the contrary, the latter are less exposed to suffer 
from want of rain ; and it is a fact, now well ascertained from data 
collected in Switzerland and in Scotland, that the slopes which de- 
scend towards the north, if they be only not too abrupt, are actually 
the most productive. This kind of anomaly is explained by the fre- 
quence and rapidity of the thaws which take place upon slopes that 
lie to the south. Frost, when not too intense, is certainly less inju- 
rious to vegetables than too rapid a thaw ; and it is easy to under- 
stand that in situations where, from the mere effect of nocturnal 
radiation, vegetables are covered almost every morning through the 
spring with hoar frost, a rapid thaw must take place every day im- 
mediately after the rise of the sun. With a northern exposure, the 
frost occurs in the same measure ; but the cause of its cessation 
does not operate so suddenly, the fusion of the rime being efiected 
by the gradual rise in temperature of the surrounding air. In other 
respects, it is obvious that the advantages and disadvantages of dif- 
ferent exposures are connected with the nature and the constitution 
of soils. The same may be said with reference to means of shelter 
from the action of prevailing winds. Stiff wet lands are much bene- 
fited by the action of free currents of air ; our stiff soils at liechel- 
bronn remain impracticable for our ploughs during but too long a 
period of the spring, when they have not been well dried in the 
months of March and April by strong winds from the east. Light 
and sandy soils, again, require to be well sheltered. The whole ob- 



IMPROVEMENT OF SOILS. 233 

ject of studying the soil, is its amelioration ; the industry of the 
agriculturist is, in fact, more effectually bestowed, and exerts a 
greater amount of influence upon the soil than upon all the other and 
varied agents which favor vegetation. 

To improve a soil is as much as to say that we seek to modify its 
constitution, its physical properties, in order to bring them into har- 
mony with the climate and the nature of the crops that are grown. 
In a district where the soil is too clayey our endeavor ought to be, to 
make it acquire to a certain extent the qualities of light soils. 
Theory indicates the means to be followed to effect such a change ; 
it suffices to introduce sand into soils that are too stiff, and to mix 
clay with those that are too sandy. But these recommendations of 
science which, indeed, the common sense of mankind had already 
pointed out, are seldom realized in practice, and only appear feasible 
to those who are entirely unacquainted with rural economy. The 
digging up and transport of the various kinds of soil according to 
the necessities of the case, are very costly operations, and I can 
quote a particular instance in illustration of the fact : my land at 
Bechelbronn is generally strong ; experiments made in the garden 
on a small scale showed that an addition of sand improved it consid- 
erably. In the middle of the farm there is a manufactory vvhich 
accumulates such a quantity of sand that it becomes troublesome ; 
nevertheless, I am satisfied that the improvement by means of sand 
would be too costly, and that all things taken into account, it would 
be better policy to buy new lands with the capital which would be 
required to improve those I already possess in the manner which has 
been indicated. I should have no difficulty in citing numerous in- 
stances where improvements by mingling different kinds of soil were 
ruinous in the end to those who undertook them. 

A piece of sandy soil, for example, purchased at a very low price, 
after having been suitably improved by means of clay, cost its pro- 
prietor' much more than the price of the best land in the country. 
Great caution is therefore necessary in undertaking any improvement 
of the soil in this direction, — in changing suddenly the nature of the 
soil. Improvement ought to take place gradually and by good hus- 
bandry, the necessary tendency of which is to improve the soil. 
Upon stiff clayey lands we put dressings and manures which tend 
to divide it, to lessen its cohesion, such as ashes, turf, long manure, 
&c. But the husbandman has not always suitable materials at his 
command, and in this case, which is perhaps the usual one, he must 
endeavor, by selecting his crops judiciously, crops which shall agree 
best with stiff soils, and at the same time meet the demands of his 
market, to make the most of his land. In a word, the true husband- 
man ought to know the qualities and defects of the land which he 
cultivates, and to be guided in his operations by these ; and in fact 
it is only with such knowledge that he can know the rent he can 
afford to pay, and estimate the amount of capital which he can rea- 
sonably employ in carrying on the operations of his farm. 

In an argillaceous or clayey soil, which we have seen above is the 
best adapted for wheat in these countries, it would be absurd to per- 

20* 



234 IMPROVEMENT OF SOILS, 

sist in attempting to grow crops that require an open soil. Clayey 
lands generally answer well for meadows, and autumn ploughing is 
always highly advantageous to them by reason of the disintegrating 
effects of the ensuing winter frost. 

Chalk occupies a large space in recent formations ; as a general 
rule, the soil it supports immediately is of no great fertility. Sir 
John Sinclair proposed to improve such soil by growing green crops 
and consuming them upon the spot. Properly treated, the chalky 
soils of England produce trefoil, turnips, and barley, and they are 
particularly adapted to cinquefoin. It is doubtful whether in France, 
where the climate is not so moist as in England, chalky lands could 
be treated to advantage on the English plan. Recent inquiries have 
shown that chalk contains a small quantity of phosphate of lime, a 
salt, as we shall see by and by, whose presence is always desirable 
in arable lands. 

Turf or turfy soils yield rich crops when we succeed in converting 
the turf into humus. The grand difficulty in dealing with turf is to 
dry it properly, inasmuch as it is generally found at the bottom of 
valleys or of old lakes and swamps. By a happy coincidence, turfy 
deposites frequently alternate with layers of sand, of gravel, of clay, 
and of vegetable earth, which have been accumulated at the same 
epoch. By a mixture, by a division of these different materials, 
preceded in every case, however, by proper draining, mere peat bogs 
may be turned into good arable soil. Pyritic turf, however, shows 
itself more intractable, it rarely yields any thing of importance. To 
improve such a soil it is absolutely necessary to have recourse to 
substances of an alkaline nature, such as chalk or lime, wood-ashes, 
&c., which have the property of decomposing the sulphate of iron 
which is formed by the efflorescence of the pyrites. Turfy lands 
can also be brought into an arable state, with the help of paring and 
burning. Scotch agriculturists, who are very familiar with reclaim- 
ing land of this kind, hold, that the best method of improving turf or 
bog lands, is to turn them into natural meadows. Where the wet 
and soft state of the soil does not allow cattle to be driven upon it, 
the crop of hay should only be cut once, the second crop should be 
left standing. By proceeding in this way mere bogs have been turned 
into productive meadows.* Turfy lands thoroughly drained and im- 
proved, present many advantages connected with their natural but 
not excessive moistness. In the neighborhood of Haguenau, mag- 
nificent hop-gardens are found upon bottoms of this kind ; madder 
also thrives in it equally well, and for certain special crops it is in my 
opinion one of the richest soils. 

Sa7idj/ soils do perfectly well in countries which are not exposed 
to long droughts ; their cultivation is attended with little expense, 
and they grow excellent crops of turnips, potatoes, carrots, and 
rye ; but it is well to exclude clover, oats, wheat, and hemp, which 
require a soil of greater consistence. In southern countries, a sys- 
tem of irrigation is absolutely necessary, in connection with the 

• Sinclair, Practical .Agriculture 



MOVING SANDS DOWNS. 235 

cultivation of sandy soils if they are not watered, they remain nearly 
barren ; the only mode of making them productive is to lay them 
out in plantations of timber. 

Those moving sandy plains of great extent, -which are found in the 
interior of many continents, seem at first sight stricken with eternal 
barrenness. Nevertheless, the mobility of the sand of the desert, 
which permits it to be swept hither and thither, and to be tossed 
about like a liquid mass, depends less upon the total absence of ar- 
gillaceous particles than upon the want of the moisture necessary to 
agglutinate or to fix its grains. The burning steppes of Africa and 
America have their oases here and there, the surface of which, 
moistened by a spring, is green with vegetation ; and whenever 
sandy plains are bathed by a river, it is possible to render them fit for 
cultivation. In Spain, for instance, in the neighborhood of San Lu- 
car de Baromeda, a povv'dery soil of extreme dryness has been fer- 
tilized by the hand of man. The mammillated downs of San Lucar 
are covered on the surface by a layer of quartzy sand, so loose that 
it is blown about by the wind ; but by a happy disposition of things, 
a lower stratum of these downs is kept constantly moist by the wa- 
ters of the Guadalquiver, and it is only necessary to remove the su- 
perficial sand, and to level the surface, in order to have a loose soil 
which unites in the highest degree two essential conditions of fer- 
tility, viz : openness, and a constant supply of moisture, which pene- 
trates the soil in virtue of its permeability ; under the influence of a 
fine climate and manure, the market gardens established in the midst 
of this desert are remarkable for the rapidity and the vigor of their 
vegetation. To avoid great expense, the labor of removing the sand 
is only undertaken in places where the layer is least thick ; and what 
is removed being heaped up as a mound around the soil which is clear- 
ed, a kind of boundary wall is formed, which is not without its use 
in affording shelter, and which becomes productive itself by the 
plantations of vines and fig-trees that are made upon it with a view 
mainly to its consolidation. In the same way in Alsace, in the plains 
of Haguenau, the soil which was a moving desert of sand, has, in 
the course of less than forty years, become one of the most fertile 
under the influence of incessant cultivation ; in the same way also it 
is that in Holland, mountains of sand, which had been accumulated 
by the winds, have been fixed. This sand, which rests upon a wet 
bottom, draws up the moisture by capillary attraction, and so be- 
comes fit to support certain vegetables. These downs, which may 
be said to have come out of the sea, have a constant tendency in 
many places to encroach upon the cultivated lands. To oppose their 
progress, the Dutch sow them with the arundo arenaria, the long 
and creeping roots of which bind together the moving mass and 
imprison the particles of sand within a kind of net-work. These . 
masses of sand become fixed in this way ; but they remain nearly 
or altogether unproductive. 

It is therefore a problem of the highest importance in many in- 
stances to fix permanently masses of sand blown up from the sea, 
by covering them with productive plantations. This problem was 



236 DOWNS ARREST OF MOVING SANDS. 

studied and successfully resolved by M. Bremontier, a French en- 
gineer, who by sagacity in the choice of means and persever- 
ance in their employment gave a complete and practical solution of 
the question among the downs of the Gulf of Gascony.* 

The downs formed by the sand which is thrown up by the ocean 
between the mouths of the Adour and the Girond, occupy a surface 
of 75 square leagues and have a mean elevation of from 60 to 70 
feet. They form a multitude of hillocks, which appear connected 
by their bases, the crowns of many of them rising to a height of 
160 feet and upwards. Under the influence of the prevailing west 
winds, these masses of sand move with a mean celerity of about 80 
feet per annum, covering forests and villages in their progress. A 
part of the little town of Mimizan is already invaded, and it has 
been calculated that in the course of twenty centuries, things pro- 
ceeding at their present rate, the rich territory of Bordeaux will 
have completely disappeared. In their progress these moving mass- 
es of sand choke up the beds of rivers, and increase the disastrous 
effects they produce otherwise by causing formidable inundations. 

The sands of the Gulf of Gascony, like those of Holland and the 
Low Countries, are not altogether without moisture ; a very short 
way below the surface they are moist, and even present a certain 
degree of cohesion. This, in fact, might have been predicated, for 
otherwise the wind which brings them from the sea would have dis- 
persed them in clouds of dust and to great distances ; but no such 
dispersion takes place. Downs advance slowly, at the rate already 
indicated, and by rolling over, as it were, upon themselves. The 
sand driven by the wind creeps up on the flanks of the ridges as 
upon an inclined plane ; after having got over the summit of the 
hillocks already formed, it falls down the opposite slope, and accu- 
mulates at the base. The action of the wind is only exerted upon 
60 much of the sand as is rendered loose and moveable by its dry- 
ness ; but the moist part is exposed, dried, and swept away in its 
turn ; in this way the whole mass of sand which was at first deposit- 
ed upon the west aspect of the hillocks is carried to the east, where 
it is in the shelter. By this process, under the influence of a wind 
which blew steadily for six days, a hillock has been seen to advance 
towards the interior of the country through a space of 3| feet.f 

The moisture contained in the sand proceeds from the rains, from 
the surface water that fdters through it and displaces the salt water 
which impregnated it originally. The very slight trace of sea-salt 
that finally remains it it has no unfavorable influence on vegeta- 
tion. 

Once aware of the fact that certain plants throve in the sands of 
downs, Bremontier saw that they alone were capable of staying their 
progress and consolidating them. The grand object was to get 
plants to grow in moving sand, and to protect them from the violent 
winds which blow off the ocean, until their roots had got firm hold 
of the soil. 

• Annals of French A!;ricuUure, vol. xxvli. p. 145. 
t D'.Aubuisson, Geognosy, vol. U. p- 467. 



ARREST OP MOVING SANDS. 237 

Downs do not bound the ocean like beaches. From the base of 
the first hillocks to the line which marks the extreme height of spring 
tides, there is always a level over which the sand sweeps without 
pausing. It was upon this level space that Bremontier sowed his 
first belt of pine and furze seeds, sheltering it by means of green 
branches, fixed by forked pegs to the ground, and in such a way 
that the wind should have least hold upon them, viz., by turning the 
lopped extremities towards the wind. Experience has shown that 
by proceeding thus, fir and furze seeds not only germinate, but that 
the young plants grow with such rapidity, that by and by they form 
a thick belt, a yard and more in height. Success is now certain. 
The plantation so far advanced, arrests the sand as it comes from 
the bed of the sea, and forms an effectual barrier to the other belts 
that are made to succeed it towards the interior. When the trees 
are five or six years of age, a new plantation is made contiguous to 
the first and more inland, from 200 to 300 feet in breadth, and so 
the process is carried on until the summits of the hillocks are gradu- 
ally attained. 

It was by proceeding in this way that Bremontier succeeded in 
covering the barren sands of the Arrachon basin with useful trees. 
Begun in 1787, the plantations in 1809 covered a surface of between 
9,000 and 10,000 square acres. The success of these plantations 
surpassed all expectation ; in sixteen years the pine trees were from 
thirty-five to forty feet in height. Nor was the growth of the furze, 
of the oak, of the cork, of the willow, less rapid. Bremontier show- 
ed for the first time in the annals of human industry, that moveable 
sands might not only be stayed in their desolating course, but actu- 
ally rendered productive. Like all other inventors, this benefactor 
of humanity was soon the object of jealousy among his contempora- 
ries. Doubts were of course entertained at first of the possibility 
of consolidating the moving sands of downs ; and when this was de- 
monstrated, the honor of originality was denied him. The ingenious 
engineer defended himself with moderation, and demanded an in- 
quiry ; in the course of which it was satisfactorily proved that noth- 
ing of the same kind had been attempted by others previously to the 
year 1788. The labors of Bremontier must be regarded as another 
of those remarkable struggles which the industry of man has suc- 
cessfully waged with the elements. 



CHAPTER V. 



OF MANURES. 



Whatever may be its constitution and physical properties, land 
yields lucrative crops only in proportion as it contams an adequate 
quantity of organic matter in a more or less advanced state of de- 
composition. There are favored soils in which this matter, desig- 



238 MANURES. 

nated by the name of humus, or mould,* exists by nature, while there 
are others, and they form the majority, which are either totally des- 
titute of it, or contain it but in insignificant proportion. To become 
productive, tliese soils require the intervention of manure ; for this 
there is no substitute, neither the labor which breaks them up, nor 
the climate which so powerfully promotes their fecundity, nor the 
salts and alkalies which are such useful auxiliaries of vegetation. 
Not that land entirely destitute of organic remains is incapable of 
producing and developing a plant. We have already seen that the 
atmosphere, light, heat, and moisture, suffice for its existence ; but 
in such a condition, vegetation is slow and often imperfect ; nor 
could agricultural industry be advantageously applied to a soil which 
approached so near to absolute sterility. 

Plants, considered in their entire constitution, contain carbon, 
water, (completely formed, or in its elements,) azote, phosphorus, 
sulphur, metallic oxides united to the sulphuric and phosphoric acids, 
chlorides, and alkaline bases in combination with vegetable acids ; 
many of these elements form no part of the atmosphere, and are 
necessarily derived from the soil. Moreover, the manures most 
generally made use of are nothing but the detritus of plants, or the 
remains or excretions of animals, including by the very fact of their 
origin the whole of the elements which constitute organized beings; 
and although it is very probable that certain tribes of plants are more 
adapted than others to appropriate the azote or the ammoniacal va- 
pors of the atmosphere, experience proves that azotized organic re- 
mains contribute in the most efficacious manner to the fertility of the 
soil. Besides, we are far from being able to affirm that the carbon 
of plants is derived from the carbonic acid of the atmosphere. 
Doubtless this acid is its principal source ; but it is possible that 
certain elements of carburetted dungs may be directly assimilated. 

The writers who have treated of manures, have generally fonried 
them into two grand classes : 

1st. Manures of organic origin, in which are again found all the 
elements of the living matter. 

2d. Mineral manures, saline or alkaline, which are particularly 
designated under the name of stimulants, thus ascribing to them the 
faculty, purely gratuitous, of facilitating the assimilation of the nu- 
triment which plants find in dung, and of stimulating and exciting 
their organs. Such a distinction has no real foundation, and nothing 
siiows so much how scanty our knowledge upon this suliject lias 
hitherto been as this tendency in the ablest minds to connect vege- 
table nutrition with the feeding of animals. 

All the agents employed by the agriculturist to restore, preserve, 
and augment the fecundity of the soil, I shall term Manures. In 
my view gypsum, marl, and ashes are manures, as much as horse- 
dung, blood, or nrine ; all contribute to the end proposed in employ- 
ing them, which is the increase of vegetable production. The best 

* Mould, or vegetable earth, as the word is generally used, is not exactly humus ; 
lint as it derives its principal qualities from the presence of the humus of the chemist, 
l shall generally employ the terms as synonymous. — Eno. E». 



DECAY OF ORGANIC MATTERS. 239 

manure, that which is in most general use, is precisely that which 
by its complex nature contains all the fertilizing principles required 
in ordinary tillage. 

Particular cultures may demand particular manures ; but the stand- 
ard manure, such as farm dung, for example, when it is derived from 
good feeding, supplied to animals with suitable and abundant litter, 
affords all the principles necessary to the development of plants ; 
such manure contains at once all the usual elements which enter 
into the organization of plants, and all the mineral substances which 
are distributed throughout their tissues ; in fact, carbon, azote, hy- 
drogen, and oxygen are found therein united with the phosphates, 
sulphates, chlorides, &c. 

In order to be directly efficacious, every manure must present 
this mixed composition. Ashes, gypsum, or lime spread upon bar- 
ren land, would not improve it in any sensible degree ; azotized or- 
ganic matter, absolutely void of saline or earthy substances, would 
probably produce no better effect ; it is the admixture of these two 
classes of principles, of which the first is derived definitively from 
the atmosphere, while the second belongs to the solid part of the 
globe, which constitutes the normal manure that is indispensable to 
the improvement of soils. 

Dead organic matter, subjected to the united influence of heat, of 
moisture, and of contact with the air, undergoes radical modifica- 
tions, and passes by a regular course of transformation into a con- 
dition more and more simple. The tissues, so long as they form a 
part of the animated being, are protected against the destructive ac- 
tion of the atmospheric agents ; in plants and animals this protec- 
tion is not extended beyond the period of their existence ; destruc- 
tion commences with death, if the accessory circumstances are suf- 
ficiently intense ; and then ensue all the phenomena of decomposi- 
tion, of that putrid fermentation which, at the expense of the primi- 
tive elements of the organized being, generates bodies more stable 
and less complicated in their constitution, and which present them- 
selves in the gaseous and crystalline conditions, forms which are 
affected by the inorganic bodies of nature in general. 

The mineral substances which had been taken up in the organiza- 
tion become freed, and are thus again restored to the earth. The 
organized substances which change the most rapidly, are precisely 
those into which azote enters as a constituent principle. Left to 
themselves, whether in solution or merely moistened, these sub- 
stances exhibit all the characteristic signs of putrefaction ; they ex- 
hale an insupportable odor ; and the result of their total and com- 
plete decomposition is finally the production of ammoniacal salts. 
The water wherein the phenomenon is accomplished facilitates it 
not only by weakening cohesion and enabling the molecules to move 
more freely, but it assists also by the very aflnnity which each of its 
own principles bears to the elements of the substance subjected to 
the putrescent fermentation. Proust observed that during the de- 
composition of gluten immersed in water, a mixture of carbonic 
acid and of pure hydrogen gas is disengaged, a phenomenon which 



240 MANURES. 

he explains by the decomposition of the water ; at the same time 
are produced ammoniacal sahs, among which are acetates and lac- 
tates, whose acids are generated by tlie very act of fermentation. 
As a striiiing example of the agency of water in the transit of azote 
into the ammoniacal state in a quarternary compound, we may take 
the putrefaction of urea. 

Urea is found in the urine of man and of quadrupeds ; its compo- 
sition, according to M. Dumas, is : 

Carbon 20.0 

Hydrogen 6.6 

Oxygen 26.7 

Azote 46.7 

100.0 

The animal substances dissolved in urine, as the mucus of the 
bladder, &c., undergo, on contact with the air, a modification which 
causes them to act upon urea like ferments. By their influence the 
elements of water react upon this substance, and transform it into 
carbonate of ammonia. 

Carbonate of ammonia is composed of : 

Carbonic acid 56.41, containing | o7y"°e"i... ."..'..!..".'."". 41 0^ 

Ammonia 43.5£C containing . | K'!"::-.::;- :::::::• -islo^ 

But 100 of urea have been found to produce by fermefltation 130 
of carbonate of ammonia. 

Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Azote. 

Previous to fermentation, 100 of urea ) 20 00 6 60 2 67 46 7 

After fermentation, 130 of carbonate ) onno 10 00 m 46 7 

of ammonia contains . . j ^"•' 

Difference O 3.4 20.6 0.0 

So that during its transformation, the urea has gained 3.4 of hy- 
drogen, and 2G.6 of oxygen. 

In water the hydrogen is to the oxygen as 1 to 8. (: : 1:8.) 

Now it is precisely in this proportion that hydrogen and oxyge<n 
are found to be acquired by the urea in passing into the state of ca- 
bonate of ammonia ; whence it follows that the elements of waie 
are fixed in the process. 

The putrefaction of azotized substances is far from always pre- 
senting results equally precise ; most frequently in decomposing 
they pass through a series of changes, still very obscure, before 
they attain their ultimate limit, viz. the production of ammoniacal 
salts. Thus from putrefying caseum dilfused in water, M. Braconnot 
obtained, among other products and ammoniacal salts, a very remark- 
able substance which he calls aposepcdine. 

Aposepedine when purified is a white crystalline substance, soluble 
in water and in alcoiiol, capable of combination with the metallic 
oxides ; azote is one of its elements. 

This substance, although engendered by the act of putrefaction, is 
nevertheless itself capable of putretying and giving birth to the last 
products of the spontaneous decomposition of azotized matter. 

One of the most striking characteristics, at least that which is 



DECAY OF ORGANIC MATTERS. 241 

most readily remarked, is the fetid odor which animal substances 
exhale during putrefaction. It is not always the smell of ammonia 
which predominates ; that of sulphuretted hydrogen gas is often 
very strong ; yet that is not the emanation which is most repulsive : 
miasmata and nauseous principles are also developed which seem to 
be the changed matter itself carried away by the gases that are dis- 
engaged. 

Sulphur, like phosphorus, is almost always a constituent of or- 
ganic bodies ; its minute proportion, however, would be insufficient 
to give out the hepatic odor so intense as we often find it during 
putrefaction. The production of sulphuretted hydrogen is connect- 
ed with the very curious fact, first appreciated by M. O. Henri, 
that sulphates dissolved in a medium impregnated with azotized 
matter in decomposition, do themselves undergo an actual reduction, 
pass into the state of sulphurets, and immediately give out sulphuret- 
ted hydrogen, either by the action of the carbonic acid of the at- 
mosphere, or by that which is formed during the putrefaction of the 
organic matter. It is by a similar action exerted upon sulphate of 
lime that M. Henri explains the origin of the sulphureous waters of 
Enghien, near Paris ; and M. Fontan in his important work on min- 
eral waters has generalized this explanation. 

The causes of the destruction of sulphates under such circum- 
stances is easily understood. During the decomposition of organiz- 
ed substances, the carbon belonging to them forms carbonic acid gas ; 
by combining both with the oxygen of the substances themselves, 
and with the oxygen of the water, it is probable that the oxygen of 
the sulphuric acid contributes equally to this formation, and that the 
sulphur is liberated. 

The hydrogen of the decomposed water, as well as that of the 
solid matter, in contact with sulphur in the nascent state, combines 
with it to form sulphuretted hydrogen, which straightway reacts 
upon the base of the sulphate, producing from it, as we know, water 
and a metallic sulphuret. This sulphuret being unable to exist when 
exposed to the continued disengagement of carbonic acid gas which 
takes place in the centre of the mass in putrefaction, yields, as a 
definite result, a carbonate on the one part, and sulphuretted hydro- 
gen on tlie other. 

The faculty which azotized organic bodies possess of undergoing 
spontaneous decomposition in presence of water, and under the in- 
fluence of heat, seems to depend upon the tendency which azote has 
to unite with hydrogen in order to form ammonia. 

This tendency is perhaps the determining cause of the phenome- 
non of fermentation taken in the most general acceptation of the 
term. Organic bodies void of azote decompose less easily, and the 
kind of alteration which they undergo from the action of water and 
air, differs in many respects from the putrefaction of azotized mat- 
ter. Of this the difficulty experienced in effecting the fermentation 
of vegetable substances is a proof Nevertheless, the vegetable re- 
fuse which goes to the dunghill, all without exception, contains azo- 
tized elements, often, it is true, in extremely minute proportions; 

21 



242 MANURES. 

but we know that there is no example of a vegetable organic tissue 
from which they are completely excluded. 

The refuse of plants, the most amply endowed with azote, such as 
cabbage, beet-root, beans, &c., are certainly those wliich are sus- 
ceptible of the most rapid and complete putrid fermentation ; straw, 
on the contrary, when alone, undergoes it slowly and imperfectly, 
the small quantity of the azotic principle which it contains is chang- 
ed, and reacts upon the ligneous particles which surround it ; but 
the effect is soon arrested, and even ceases entirely, unless substances 
richer in azote concur. The woody matter of the straw is exactly 
.in the condition of sugar which has not had a dose of ferment suf- 
ficient for its total transformation into alcohol. 

Most organized substances, whether they belong to the animal or 
vegetable kingdom when placed in certain conditions, undergo the 
profoundest changes from the action of hydrogen ; these alterations 
ought to be studied with all the more care, because in practical 
agriculture we are interested successively in fostering or preventing 
the causes which produce them, according as our object is to accele- 
rate the decomposition of vegetable refuse for manure, or to adopt 
the precautions which experience suggests, in order to preserve 
the produce of our harvests unchanged. Organic substances moist- 
ened and exposed to the air under a temperature, the minimum of 
which (I believe after several experiments) may be fixed at 48° or 50° 
F., seize upon the oxygen and absorb it, in part, in order to form water 
with their hydrogen, and carbonic acid with their carbon. When 
these substances are accumulated in a mass sufficiently great, the 
heat produced is not rapidly dissipated, the temperature rises, and 
promotes the reaction to such a degree as to produce active burning, 
a conflagration, in place of the slow combustion manifested at first. 
It is not very unusual to see hay, which had been gathered in too 
damp a condition, take fire in the stack ; and the high temperature 
acquired by wet rags placed in the fermenting vats of paper mills, 
and the copious production of carbonic acid which results, show that 
we are right in assimilating this kind of action to the phenomenon 
of combustion. This sluggish combustion is not peculiar to azotized 
organic substances : it takes place equally in those destitute of azote. 
The alteration of organic matters, the combustion which goes on at 
a low temperature by the action of the air, differs in its results from 
the decomposition which is effected in the midst of a liquid mass. 
We have seen, for example, that gluten feiinonting under water, 
disengages hydrogen gas. Now Berthollet has established, and 
Saussure has confirmed his observations, that an azotized body in 
putrefaction, the whole of whose parts are in contact with the air, 
never contributes either hydrogen gas or azote to the confined at- 
mosphere in which it is placed ; and on the other hand, Saussure 
has shown, th^t organic substances which do not emit liydrogen gaa 
during their spontaneous decomposition in a medium void of oxygen, 
do not alter the volume of an atmosphere of which this gas forms a 
part ; on the contrary, these substances condense oxygen as soon as 



DECAY OF OKGANIC MATTERS. 2431 

they attain that stage of their alteration in which they give out hy 
drogen. 

In pursuing with persevering sagacity the study of putrefaction, 
M. de Saussure discovered the cause of this condensation ; it con- 
sists in the fact, that an organic substance in course of spontaneous 
decomposition, acts in some respects hke the platina sponge placed 
in a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen gas ; we know that platina 
recently heated and introduced into a mixture of these two gases, 
determines their union in the proportions required to constitute water. 
Now by substituting for the metal some moistened seeds, previously 
deprived of their germinating faculty, the same effect is produced : 
the two gases combine until one of the two entirely disappears. 
^Yhen this combustion of hydrogen, proceeding from the decomposi- 
tion of organic substances, takes place in the body of the atmosphere 
which contains azote, it is possible that a minute quantity of ammonia 
may be produced together with water ; nor is it going too far to 
suppose, that manures very slightly azotized, take up azote from 
the atmosphere during their fermentation ; that during the act of 
vegetation itself, the hydrogen proceeding from the decomposed 
water, or yet more, that which makes part of the essential oils form- 
ed by plants, may, in oxidating afresh, introduce atmospheric azote 
into their composition. 

Dead organized matter, such as wood, straw, or leaves, exposed 
to wet, and for a long time to the action of the air, ends by becom- 
ing transformed into a brown substance, which when damped is al- 
most black, which falls to powder when dry, and which is commonly 
known by the name of humus or mould. 

This is, so to speak, the last term of the decomposition of organic 
matter ; mould appears to belong already to the mineral kingdom ; 
and whatever may be the diversity of its origin, it presents a suf- 
ficient number of peculiar characteristics to be considered a distinct 
substance. In fact, the atmosphere continues fo exert its action 
upon mould ; its inflammable elements are dissipated by a slow and 
imperceptible combustion, giving place to water and carbonic acid. 
But in this ulterior decomposition, those fetid products which char- 
acterize putrid fermentation are no longer observed. 

Wet saw-dust, placed for some weeks in an atmosphere of oxygen, 
forms a certain quantity of carbonic acid, and the volume of the gas 
does not perceptibly diminish. The wood at the surface acquires a 
deep-brown color. Several experiments made by Saussure, prove 
that dead wood does not absorb the oxygen gas of the atmosphere ; 
it transforms it into carbonic acid, and the action takes place as if 
the carbon of the organic matter alone experienced the effects of the 
oxygen ; for the gaseous volume remains the same. The loss, liow- 
ever, undergone by the ligneous fibre, during its exposure to the air, 
is greater than it ought to bo if carbon alone were eliminated : whence 
Saussure concludes, that while the woody matter loses carbon, it 
also lets some of its constituent water escape. 

As a consequence of these observations, the relative proportion 
of carbon ought to augment in the humid wood changed by the ac- 



244 MANURES. 

tion of the atmosphere, since we have established that by this action 
the woody fibre suffers loss in the elements of water besides what it 
loses in carbon. This is confirmed by the following analyses. The 
first, made upon some oak wood, previously purified by washing in 
water and in alcohol, we owe to Messrs. Thenard and Gay-Lussac ; 
the succeeding one to Messrs. Meyer and Will : 

Oak wood. IJ. rolten. Id. rotten. 

Carbon .'52.5 53.6 5G.2 

Hydrogen and o.\ygcn, water • .47.5 46.4 43.8 

100.0 100.0 100.0 

Wood decomposed under water, without being in direct contact 
with the air, undergoes a different modification ; it is blanched in- 
stead of blackened, and the carbon far from increasing is diminished. 
Sanssure thinks that this kind of alteration depends mainly on the 
loss of the soluble and coloring principles of the wood, principles 
containing more carbon than the ligneous matter itself: so that pure 
woody fibre exposed wet to the action of the air would yield pro- 
ducts analogous to those which result from its decomposition under 
water. 

The damp linen rags which are fermented in paper manufactories 
afford a product which is white, and but slightly coherent. The 
mass, which heats successively during the operation, loses about 20 
per cent, of its original weight. This is exactly what takes place 
in wood decayed by the alternate action of water and air, namely, it 
becomes white and extremely friable. 

Some oak arrived at this stage of decomposition contained, ac- 
cording to Liebig : 

Carbon 47-6 

Hydrogen 0-2 

Oxygen 44.9 

Ashes 1.3 

100.0 

Compared with the composition of oak wood when sound, these 
numbers show that during its modification the wood has lost carbon, 
and that it has gained hydrogen. The elements of water must ne- 
cessarily have intervened, and become fi.xed during the reaction. 
Ligneous fibre decaying under water is not thereby completely pro- 
tected from the atmosphere. Water always holds some air in solu- 
tion, and the oxygen of that air reacts exactly as if it were in the 
gaseous state. 

Upon all the phenomena of decomposition connected with fermen- 
tation, with putrefaction, or with dilatory combustion, heat exerts 
an influence which has certainly not been suificiently appreciated. 
Organic bodies sunk in a large mass of water are not exposed to 
changes of temperature so various and abrupt as when they are 
placed in the atmosi)here ; their decomposition is more gradual, 
more uniform, and the soluble materials which they contain, or which 
are the result of the alteration they are undergoing, are in a great 
measure dissolved. Temperature may also produce great differences 



DECAY OF ORGANIC MATTERS. 245 

in the final result of the decomposition. Peat, which is derived, as 
we know, from the slow decomposition of submerged plants, does not 
appear to be formed in the swamps of warm climates ; it has, per- 
haps, never been encountered in the stagnant waters of the equinoc- 
tial regions ; there the woody fibre appears to be totally dissipated 
in carbonic acid gas, and in marsh gas, the probable source of the 
insahibrity of those countries. Lakes with peat bottoms are not 
found except on the very high table-lands of the Andes, in localities 
where the mean temperature does not exceed 49° or 50° F. 

The alkalies are powerful agents in the decomposition of certain 
organic substances, whether in determining or in accelerating it. 
There are some, indeed, which experience no change without their 
intervention, whatever may be the other conditions favorable to de- 
composition. Thus, according to M. Chevreul, many coloring sub- 
stances may be preserved in solution almost indefinitely, without 
change, in contact with gallic acid ; but the presence of a very small 
quantity of free alkali sufiices for their immediately acquiring the 
power of absorbing oxygen, and at the same time of acquiring a brown 
tint. M. Chevreul observed that 3.087 grs. of hematine dissolved 
in potash will absorb 3.857 grs. of oxygen in forming 0.925 of car- 
bonic acid. The oxygen which enters into the carbonic acid, there- 
fore, represents nothing like the quantity which was fixed by the 
solution, and it is almost certain that this gas likewise reacted upon 
the hydrogen of the coloring matter. The use of the alkalies for 
accelerating the destruction of organized matter has been long known 
to agriculturists. 

Straw, fern, and the ligneous parts of plants are sometimes strat- 
ified with quick-lime, in order to facilitate their disintegration, and 
consequently their decomposition. The utility of this old practice 
cannot be disputed while confined within certain limits ; but it is 
often abused ; for it is beyond doubt that alkalies mingled indiscrim- 
inately with manure become in reality more injurious than advan- 
tageous for the end proposed in their introduction. 

The appearance of a certain brown substance, little soluble in 
water, but easily dissolving in alkalies, is a characteristic proper to 
all vegetable matter under decomposition ; a characteristic which 
becomes more marked as the decomposition advances towards its 
last stage, namely, the production of humus. This substance is 
ulmine, which, on account of some acid properties which it pos- 
sesses, is also named ulmic acid. It forms a part of mould, and M. 
P. BouUay constantly found it in the water of dunghills. 

In 1797, Vauquelin discovered ulmine united with potash in the 
matter of the exudation from the ulcer of an elm-tree. 

In 1804, Klaproth confirmed this observation. M. Braconnot 
succeeded in obtaining ulmine artificially by subjecting woody fibre 
to the action of alkalies. This substance is easily procured by 
carefully heating in a silver capsule, and continually stirring a mix- 
ture of equal parts of potash and of saw-dust slightly damped. At 
a certain time the woody matter softens and suddenly dissolves ; the 
mass then begins to swell up, and the fire is slaked. The product 

21* 



246 HUMUS. 

obtained dissolves almost totally in water. The solution is of a very 
deep brown color, and contains as principal ingredient ulinine com- 
bined with potash ; the ulmine is precipitated by the addition of a 
sufficient quantity of weak sulphuric acid. After having been 
washed and dried, ulmine is black and brittle, and resembles jet ; 
while still wet, it reddens turnsole paper, and its solution in potash 
forms with several salts, and by the way of double decomposition, 
insoluble ulmates. M. Peligot assigns to ulmine the following 
composition : 

Carbon 72.3 

Hydrogen 6.2 

Oxygen 21.5 

100.0 

Dunghills, rotten wood, and mould, always contain a brown sub- 
stance, which possesses properties very similar to those which char- 
acterize ulmine obtained by the action of alkalies upon ligneous 
fibre. 

Mould which contains this ulmine in abundance, and in the con- 
dition most favorable to vegetation, ought on that account to be 
examined with attention. Its history has, indeed, been so ably traced 
by M. de Saussure, that science at the present day can add but little 
to the important deductions of the celebrated author of the Re- 
cherches Chimiques. 

M. de Saussure defines vegetable mould (humus) to be the black 
substance which covers dead vegetables after they have been long 
exposed to the combined action of water and oxygen. His experi- 
ments refer to mould nearly pure ; that is, separated by a fine sieve 
from the vegetable remains which are always mixed with it ; to 
mould which had been gathered on high rocks, or from the trunks 
of trees, where it could not have been exposed to admixture or to 
any influence, other than that of the spontaneous decomposition by 
which it had been produced. All the varieties of mould collected 
in this way appeared fertile, especially when they were previously 
mixed with gravel, which supplies support to the roots of plants, and 
permits the access of the aii^. That variety, however, must be ex- 
cepted which was obtained from the interior of trees, and had been 
formed in such a situation that the rain-water which entered found 
no free outlet ; the humus then contained extractive principles, de- 
rived in part from the living plant, and which seemed to obstruct the 
pores of the vegetable to vvliich it was applied as manure. 

In making comparative calcinations in close vessels of different 
varieties of humus, and of plants similar to tliose from which they 
had proceeded, and collecting tlie charcoal on one hand, and the 
volatile and gaseous matters on the other, M. de Saussure discover- 
ed that they contained, for the same weight, a larger quantity of 
carbon and of azote than the vegetables whence they proceeded. 
The larger proportion of azote in the humus seems to imply that 
during tlieir decomposition, vegetables do not throw off this element; 
but to this cause must be added that which might be connected with 
the spoils of insects which live in humus. 



HUMUS. 247 

Weak acids have no other effect upon humus than to dissolve out 
the metallic, earthy, and alkaline elements which it contains. The 
more powerful acids, such as the sulphuric acid, frequently cause a 
disengagement of acetic acid. Alcohol scarcely acts upon humus, 
merely dissolving out of it a few hundredth parts of resinous matter, 
which probably pre-existed in the vegetable. Potash and soda dis- 
solve humus almost completely, causing an evolution of ammonia. 
From this solution, acids throw down a brown, inflammable powder, 
possessing the characters which we have recognised in ulmine. The 
ulmine which is separated in this way, is far from corresponding 
with the weight of the matter treated with the alkalies, which is 
evidently due to the humus containing principles which are not pre- 
cipitated from the alkaline solution. 

A quantity of humus which yielded no more than one tenth of 
ashes by incineration, only lost one eleventh of its weight under re- 
peated treatments with boiling water. The humus thus exhausted, 
was exposed in a moist state to the action of the air for three months, 
and gave a new quantity of soluble matter under renewed washing 
with water ; and the same effect is constantly reproduced. By ex- 
posing moist insoluble humus to the air, therefore, a quantity of so- 
luble extractive matter is formed. This matter, obtained by evapo- 
rating the water which is charged with it, is not deliquescent ; it 
yields ammonia on distillation. The watery solution, brought to the 
consistence of sirup, is neutral to re-agents, and its taste is sensibly 
sweet 

It is familiarly known that the alkaline salts, which enter into the 
constitution of vegetable juices, but rarely exhibit the reactions that 
are proper to them ; the plant or the sap must be dried and inciner- 
ated before their presence can be ascertained. It is the same with 
regard to the salts contained in humus. 

Humus, as I have already observed, is the last term in the putre- 
faction of vegetable organic matter ; its elements have acquired a 
stability which enables them to resist all fermentation. M. de Saus- 
sure preserved humus for a whole year in vessels filled with distilled 
water, and plunged in mercury, without remarking any emission of 
gas. Still it is unquestionable that the organic portion of humus is 
completely destructible when exposed moist to the action of the air ; 
in the course of time it is dissipated, and by and by there remains 
nothing more than the fixed saline and earthy matters which it con- 
tained. This fact M. B. de Saussure had already perceived from 
his observations upon the vegetable soil that occurs in the country 
between San Germane and Turin. This destructibility of vegetable 
earth, says M. de Saussure, sen., is a fact without exception ; and 
as often as agriculturists have proposed to supply the place of ma- 
nure by repeated ploughings, they have had sad experience of its 
truth : the soil is gradually impoverished, and fertile fields ultimate- 
ly become barren. I may add, that the nature of the climate has a 
vast influence upon the dissipation of the fertilizing principles of the 
soil, and that Europeans are certainly in error when they object to 
the superficial ploughings or hoeings which the land so commonly 



248 NITRIFICATION. 

receives in tropical countries. It is there well known that too much 
stirring of the soil is often prejudicial even in irrigated lands, where 
consequently the bad eflects cannot be attributed to too great a de- 
gree of dryness. The information which has lately reached the 
Academy of Sciences upon the agriculture of the French posses- 
sions in Africa, tend to make us perceive that the same cause pro- 
duces the same effects in Algeria, and that it is not without reason 
that the Arabs only work their lands that are preparing for grain 
crops, very superficially. 

Humus is, in fact, dissipated by a process of slow combustion in 
the air : in contact with oxygen, it produces carbonic acid, as is 
proved by the experiments of M. de Saussure. Pure humus, moist- 
ened with distilled water, confined in bell-glasses placed over mer- 
cury, formed carbonic acid, causing the disappearance of the oxygen 
of the air. The volume of the acid gas formed, corresponded in 
volume with that of the oxygen which had disappeared. Humus, 
therefore, in contact with air, gives off carbonic acid, and the phe- 
nomenon here still takes place as if carbon were not alone consumed. 
The loss experienced is greater thun that which ought to occur from 
the quantity of carbon which unites with the oxygen ; and Saussure 
concluded that there is, at the same time, a loss of the elements of 
water. The capital fact which results from these experiments of 
Saussure, the deduction directly applicable to the theory of manures 
is this : that humus is dissipated when it is exposed to the air, and 
that during the slow combustion which it undergoes, it is a constant 
source of carbonic acid gas. 

To complete the views that may throw light on the part played 
by manures, I have still to speak of an important phenomenon which 
occasionally takes place under the same conditions as those that ac- 
company the decomposition, the putrefaction of animal matters : I 
mean the spontaneous formation of nitric acid — the occurrence of 
nitrification as it is called. Nitric acid results from the union of 
azote with oxygen. Such at least is the constitution of this acid 
when it is combined in salts ; but in its isolated state, it is always 
united with a certain quantity of water. It has not yet been obtain- 
ed, and it appears indeed not to exist, in the perfectly dry or anhy- 
drous state. The azote, therefore, does not combine directly with 
the oxygen ; there must be, at all events, the intervention of water, 
and to effiect the union of the two gases by means of the electric 
spark, the mixture, according to Cavendish, must be moist. Never- 
theless, the combination of azote with oxygen appears to be singular- 
ly favored by the presence of earthy or alkaline bases, seeing that 
in nature the nitrates are met with in a certain abundance ; but the 
circumstances which determine their formation are still involved in 
deep obscurity. 

Three distinct origins may be assigned to the natural nitrates : 
1st. certain soils, still indiflferently studied, show an efllorescence of 
nitrate of potash on their surface, or by lixiviation yield large quan- 
tities of tliis salt. Such is the source of the saltpetre which is im- 
ported from India. 



PRODUCTION OF NITRE AND NITRATES. 249 

According to M. Proust, the soil of certain localities in the neigh- 
borhood of Saragossa is an inexhaustible mine of saltpetre. I have 
myself seen, near Latacunga, a short way from Quito, upon a soil 
formed of trachytic debris, a similar production of nitre taking place 
as it were under my eyes. 

2d. On the coast of Peru, in the desert of Tarapaca, at a short 
distance from the port of Iquique, and in an argillaceous soil of ex- 
tremely recent formation, there are numerous stratified deposites of 
nitrate of soda, analogous to, and perhaps contemporaneous with, the 
deposites of common salt which are worked upon the same coast, in 
the desert of Sechura, near the equator. This is, so far as I know, 
the only instance of a nitrate being dug out of the bowels of the 
earth as a mineral mass. The nitrate of soda of Tarapaca, reaches 
Europe at the present time in large quantities, and supplies the 
place of nitrate of potash in many chemical processes. Various ex- 
periments have also been made upon the value of the salt as a ma- 
nure ; but at present these experiments have been very contradic- 
tory, and further experience seems necessary before any definitive 
judgment can be come to on the matter. 

3d. The greater number of the soils that are exposed to animal 
emanations — heaps of rubbish proceeding from buildings that have 
been long inhabited, the soil of stables, cow-houses, cellars, &c., 
almost always contain a quantity of nitrates. In countries where 
rain seldom falls, and where consequently these salts, which are ex- 
tremely soluble, can accumulate in the soil, in Egypt, for example, 
the ruins of ancient cities are at the present time true nitre-beds. 
It is with the formation from nitre in such circumstances that we 
feel particularly interested. The presence of the salt is frequently 
proclaimed in our agricultural operations ; it is formed during the 
preparation of our dunghills, in the midst of our cultivated fields, 
and we discover it in the plants which we gather. We are by so 
much the more interested in discovering its existence, and in ascer- 
taining its mode of action, as in the actual state of our knowledge we 
are still unable to say whether or no nitre is an auxiliary in the 
phenomena of vegetation, and contributes to the production of the 
azotized principles which enter into the organization of plants. 

To have nitrates formed, the presence of azotized organic matter 
is not sufficient ; it is further necessary that this matter during its 
decomposition be in contact with alkaline, calcareous, or magnesian 
carbonates. It has been observed that rocks of a crystalline struc- 
ture do not nitrify so readily when they are without the substances 
which have just been named. The calcareous and magnesian rocks 
which are most favorable to nitrification, under the influence of ani- 
mal emanations and of vegetables in a state of decomposition, are 
those which are the least coherent, or which are most porous, such 
as chalk, tufa, &c. In those countries where the soil does not un- 
dergo spontaneous nitrification, certain arrangements of circum- 
stances, known to favor the production of saltpetre, are made : arti- 
ficial nitre-beds are prepared. In the north of Europe where the 
rocks are granitic, in a hut or shed built of wood, a mixture is made 



250 THEORY OF THE rORMATlON OF NITKIC ACID. 

of common earth, of calcareous sand or marl, and of wood-ashes. 
This heap is watered with the urine of herbivorous animals, and the 
mixture is stirred or shifted from time to lime to favor the access 
of the air ; and with the same view, the workmen are very careful 
never to beat or press the heap, which is generally from two to two 
and a half feet in thickness, and usually of the whole length of the 
hut or shed. Experience has shown that the process of nitrification 
goes on best in the shade. In Prussia, the practice is to wet with 
the water of a dunghill a mixture composed of five parts of vegeta- 
ble earth, and one part of wood-ashes and straw. With this kind 
of mortar, solid walls or masses from twenty to four and twenty 
feet in length, by about six feet and a half in thickness, are built, 
rods of wood being introduced during the construction in considera- 
ble numbers, and in such a way that they can be pulled out when 
the mass has acquired sufiicient solidity ; by this means it is obvious 
that a very free access of air is secured to the interior of these 
nitre walls, which are always built in damp places, and thatched over 
with straw to j)reserve them both from the sun and the rain. The 
mass is watered from time to time, and after the lapse of a year, 
the materials are held sufficiently impregnated with saltpetre to be 
worth lixiviating. 

In these artificial nitre-beds we perceive the object to be, to com- 
bine the circumstances under which the nitrates are formed in the 
soil of stables, and in the cellars of human habitations. Organic 
matters, rich in azote, are, in fact, brought into contact with earthy 
alkaline carbonates. The necessity that is felt in the arrangement 
of nitre-beds for the introduction of substances of animal origin, 
leads us to presume tiiat the greater part of the nitric acid which is 
jiroduced, is derived from the azote of these substances. But 
w iiether this azote combines with the oxygen of the air, or with the 
tixygen of the organic principles, we do not know — we are still ig- 
norant of the way in which the acidification is eflected. 

Professor Liebig, setting out from the fact that azotized organic 
substances always produce ammonia during their putrefaction, and 
next perceiving that during the combustion of ammoniacal gas, 
iiiixod with a large excess of hydrogen, there is always oxidation of 
the azote, concludes that nitrification is the result of the slow com- 
lui&lion of the ammonia which is the product of the azotized matters 
ill jjrogress of decomposition. The azote of ammonia is indeed 
oxidated under favor of divers conditions which it is easy to secure. 
In burning animal substances by means of oxide of copper, it is well 
known how many precautions must be taken to prevent the appear- 
ance of nitrous acid ; and on the contrary, by taking measures to 
favor the production of this acid, for example, by passing a current 
of ammoniacal gas over peroxide of iron or manganese in a red hot 
tube, abundanct^ of nitrate of ammonia is obtained. The same re- 
sult follows exposure of a mixture of oxygen and ammoniacal gas 
to the action of incandescent spongy j)ialinum. The determining 
cause of the acidification of the azote, which forms an element of 
the ammonia, is probably due to this, tlial during the combustion two 



DETECTION OF NITRATES IN THE SOIL. 251 

bodies are formed which are capable of combining immediately : 
nitric acid, on one hand, and on the other water, without which this 
acid could not exist. The phenomenon, however, only takes place 
in this instance at a considerably elevated temperature. At ordi- 
nary temperatures, combustion of the elements of ammonia has not, 
as far as 1 know, yet been observed ; and in a series of experiments 
which I undertook, proceeding all the while upon ideas completely 
in conformity with those advanced by Liebig, I did not succeed in 
forming any nitrates by enclosing mixtures of chalk, potash, &c., in 
an atmosphere composed of oxygen and ammoniacal vapor. 

In a communication made to the Academy of Sciences, M. Kuhl- 
man announces that he had ascertained the presence of nitrate of 
ammonia in the products of the putrefaction of animal matter. If 
this announcement be confirmed, if nitric acid be in reality one of 
the numerous products of the putrid fermentation, the nitrification of 
soils in contact with organic matters would be readily explicable. 
I must say, however, that I have sought in vain for nitrate of ammo- 
nia in the product of the putrid fermentation of caseum. And after 
all, we should still be at a loss to account for the formation of nitre 
in many places, where it appears to be produced in the absence of 
organic matter, as in the saltpetre soils of India, South America, 
and Spain. Dr. John Davy, who visited the nitre districts of Cey- 
lon, and Proust, who long inhabited the Peninsula, have given it as 
their opinion that the nitre appears in soils which contain no vestiges 
of organic matter. The assertion of Proust, however, is open to 
suspicion, inasmuch as in his memoir he affirms that the lands close 
to those that produce the nitre are extremely fertile, so that they 
yield abundant crops without ever receiving manure. But at the 
present day, it is a law that every fertile soil must contain or receive 
dead organic matter. In Ceylon, according to Davy, the caverns, 
the walls of which become covered with an efflorescence of salt- 
petre with such rapidity, have a fertile and thickly wooded soil lying 
over them, the percolations from which may readily penetrate their 
interior. The observations which I had an" opportunity of making 
upon the nitre soils near Latacunga, were not perhaps of sufficient 
precision ; but I think I can affirm that the soil was not without hu- 
mus : patches were perceived here and there that were covered with 
turf. It must still be admitted, however, that in the localities which 
have been particularly indicated there must exist some peculiar and 
permanent cause of nitrification ; inasmuch as in other and fertile 
soils, saltpetre only appears as it were accidentally, and never in 
extraordinary quantity. 

Whatever the value of the ingenious but still very imperfect theo- 
ries of nitrification, it is still of importance to ascertain the exist- 
ence or absence of nitrates in the soil. WoUaston recommended 
a process which enables us to do this very readily. It is founded 
on the property possessed by the aqua regia — a mixture of the nitric 
and hydrochloric acids — to dissolve pure gold, which, as is familiarly 
known, resists the action of either of these acids applied separately. 
The soil in which the presence of a nitrate is suspected is treated 



252 FAKM-YAKD DUNG. 

with boiling distilled water, and thrown upon a filter. The filtered 
fluid is reduced by evaporation to a very small quantity, which is 
then poured into a test tube, and a little pure hydrochloric acid is 
added ; some particles of leaf g-old are then introduced, and the 
fluid is stirred with a glass rod. If any nitrates have been present, 
the particles of gold are speedily dissolved. 

Having now described the circumstances which determine, and 
the phenomena which accompany the decomposition of dead or- 
ganic matter, I have next to treat of manures in particular, of their 
preparation, of their application, and of their relative values. 
Sj)caking generally, the manure which is derived from the dejec- 
tions of animals, supplied in a farm-yard with abundance of food 
and of litter, used with the double object of cleanliness and health, 
is the best of all. The principal substances which contribute day 
by day to increase the mass of our dunghills are straw, and the ex- 
cretions and urine of horned cattle, horses, hogs, &c. These va- 
rious substances, besides the organic elements which enter into their 
composition, further contain the various mineral substances which 
are indispensable to the development of vegetables. Animal excre- 
ments of every kind, in fact, when they are burned, leave quantities 
of ashes which are frequently very considerable, and in whicii are 
encountered the same saline and earthy ingredients that pre-existed 
in the forage with which the animals were supplied. Excrements, 
therefore, necessarily vary in their composition according to the 
kind of food that is consumed, and the nature and the state of health 
of the animal which produced them. Those of the herbivora have 
never been sufllciently examined. Thaer and Einhof have merely 
ascertained that cow-dung contains an extractive principle, partly 
coagulable by heat, and that remains of the food may be separated 
from it. All excrementitious matters, in fact, contain a certain 
quantity of the alimentary matter which has escaped digestion, 
especially when animals are abundantly supplied with food. Some 
albuminous matter is also found there ; but the substance after vege- 
table remains that appears to predominate is bilious.* 

We know that after mastication, the food, mingled with saliva and 
the secretions of the mucous glands, passes into the gullet, and from 
thence into the stomach. There it imbibes gastric juice, turns sour, 
becomes modified, and is finally converted into a kind of pulp which 
is called chyme. Once formed, chyme passes into the small intes- 
tines, where it encounters the bile and pacreatic juice, whicli modify 
it, and cause it to separate into chyle, which is absorbed by the ves- 
sels of the bowels, and excrementitious residue, which descends into 
tlie large intestines, where it becomes a fetid mass that is expelled 
from time to time by the animal. 

* The latest inquiries of the |ihy.-;iolof.'ical chemists would lead us to suspect that 
this was not tlie case, liile iiuf;ht only to ho an occasional, and even an unnatural 
constituent of animal excrement, if these views be well founded. It seems that tho 
elements of hile added to the elements of starch supply the precise clenienls of fat ; a 
substance so abundantly t'ormed in the process of clijiestioii. Tlie bile that is poured 
into the upper part of tlie alimentary canal is probably all used up in forming fat. — 
Enu. Ed. 



MANURES URINE. 253 

The bile which accompanied the fecal matter is secreted by the 
liver, and is familiarly known as a viscid, bitter fluid of a yellowish 
green color and a peculiarly nauseous odor. According to M. The- 
nard, the bile of the ox contains : — 

Water 700 

Picromel* 69 

l'"atty matter 15 

Soda, phosphate of soda, chlorides of potassium and } ,r. 

sodium, sulphate of soda \ 

Phosphate of lime, oxide of iron 1 

795 

Urine is a liquid secreted by the kidneys from arterial blood ; it 
passes into the bladder by the ureters. Its composition varies ac- 
cording to the animals which produce it. Urea is its most charac- 
teristic principle ; and in the water which it always contains in large 
proportion, various saline substances and animal matter, which is re- 
garded as mucus of the bladder, are encountered. The urine of the 
horse, according to M. Chevreul, contains carbonate of soda, of lime, 
and of magnesia, sulphate of soda, chloride of sodium, hippurate of 
soda, urea, and a red-colored oil. 

The urine of horned cattle has a similar compositon, with this dif- 
feience, that it is much more watery. In the urine of our cow- 
houses which had undergone change, I have ascertained the presence 
of the alkaline carbonates, of common salt, and of the reddish oil 
mentioned above. Having at various times had occasion to evapor- 
ate considerable quantities of the urine of the horse, I always ob- 
served that on coming to the boiling point, a quantity of azotized 
matter which resembled albumen was coagulated. I also perceived 
in the urine of herbivorous animals a volatile acid, to which its odor 
is probably owing. 

In the urine of the camel, M. Chevreul found the carbonates of 
lime and magnesia, silica, sulphate of lime, and oxide of iron, in 
very small quantities ; chloride of potassium, carbonate of potash, 
sulphate of soda, in small quantities ; sulphate of potash, in large 
quantity ; urea ; an alkaline hippurate ; and a reddish oil. 

The urine of the rabbit, according to Vauquelin, contains carbon- 
ate of lime, of magnesia, and of potash, chloride of potassium, sul- 
phate of potash, sulphur, urea, and mucus. 

The urine of birds is distinguished by the large proportion of uric 
acid it contains. Food, however, has a great influence upon this 
proportion ; highly azotized aliments increasing it considerably. 
Wollaston observed that the excrements of a fowl which was led 

* Picromel, discovered in the hile of the ox by M. Thenard, is colorless, and of the 
consistence of sirup. It produces upon the tongue an acrid and Ijitter sensation, wliich 
rapidly chanses to a flavor slightly sugary. The recent researches of Messrs. Tiede- 
mann and Gmelin have discovered in ox bile substances which had escaped the first in- 
vestigations. These chemists found : 1st. a subsUtnce having'the smell of musk, and 
which is probably one of the causes of the odor peculiar to the excrement of kine ; 2d. 
fatty substances ; 3d. biliary resin ; 4th. a crystallized substance called taurine ; 5th. 
biliary sugar, of which azote forms one of the elements. According to Messrs. Tiede- 
mann and Gmelin, the picromel of M. Thenard results from the union of sugar and 



biliary resin. 



22 



254 MANURES THE PUTREFACTIVE FERMENTATION. 

upon herbage contained only 2 per cent, of uric acid. That of a 
pheasant fed upon barley contained, on the contrary, 14 per cent. ; 
and that of a falcon which fed upon flesh alone, yielded scarcely any 
thing but uric acid. The urine of an ostrich was found by Fourcroy 
and Vauquelin to contain uric acid in the proportion of about one six- 
teenth of its mass. 

I have already given the composition of urea. Hippuric acid is 
an azotizcd acid which is readily obtained by adding a little hydro- 
chloric acid to the fresh urine of the horse reduced by evaporation to 
about one tenth of its original volume, when a granular crystalline 
mass is precipitated. If the urine have been stale instead of fresh, 
benzoic acid and not hippuric acid is obtained ; benzoic acid was, in 
fact, long admitted as one of the elements of the urine of herbivorous 
animals ; but it is derived from the transformation of hippuric acid 
into benzoic acid and ammonia, the change being produced by con- 
tact with the organic matters which putrefy so quickly in urine. 
Liebig was the author of this observation ; it was in operating upon 
unchanged urine that he discovered hippuric acid. The following is 
its composition : — 

Carbon C0.7 

Hydrogen .5.0 

Oxygen 2f).3 

Azote 8.0 

1000 

Uric acid has not yet been met with in the urine of mammiferous 
herbivora ; but it exists in that of man, having been first discovered 
in calculi from the bladder ; whence it received the name of lithic 
acid. Liebig's analysis shows it to be composed of : — 

Carbon 36.1 

Hydrogen 2.4 

Oxygen 28.2 

Azote 33.4 

lOO.O 

The litter most commonly used to absorb the urine of stall-kept 
animals is wheat straw, which consists in principal part of lignine 
or woody fibre : like all vegetable tissues, however, it contains an 
azotized principle, and substances that are soluble in caustic alkalies. 
In the ashes oi' straw, we have indicated silica as abundant, and va- 
rious alkaline and cartiiy salts. The proportion of azote appears to 
vary in the ratio of from 3 to 6 per 1000. An analysis which 1 made 
of dry wheat straw gave the following elements : — 

Carbon 48.4 

Hydrogen 5.3 

Cxygen 38.9 

Azote 00.4 to 0.6 

Ashes 07.0 

liJO 

Agriculturists have, in all ages, admitted tliat the most powerful 
manures are derived from animal substances, an opinion or rather a 
fact, which, expressed in scientific language, amounts to this, that 



MANURES — VALUE OF AMMONIACAL SALTS. 255 

the most active manures are precisely those which contain the largest 
proportion of azotized principles. It is obvious indeed from every 
thing which precedes, that all the substances which contribute to 
form farm dung, contain azote ; and that into many of them, such as 
uric acid, hippuric acid, and urea, this element enters very largely. 

When we consider the immediate changes which all highly azo- 
tized substances undergo in the process of putrefaction, we can fore- 
see that in their transformation into manure, they must give origin 
to ammoniacal salts ; and well-established facts prove beyond d.oubt 
that salts, having ammonia for their base, must be ranked among 
the most powerful of all the agents in promoting vegetation. It is 
sufficient, for instance, to bear in mind that in the productive hus- 
bandry of Flanders, putrid urine is the manure that is employed with 
the greatest success ; but we have seen that by putrefaction, the 
urea of the urine is entirely changed into onrbonate of ammonia. 
The fields of Flanders are consequently fertilized with a solution 
of carbonate of ammonia in water. 

Along a great extent of the coast of Peru, the soil, which con- 
sists of a quartzy sand mixed with clay, and is perfectly barren of 
itself, is rendered fertile, is made to yield abundant crops, by the 
application of guano; and this manure, which effects a change so 
prompt and so remarkable, consists almost exclusively of ammoniacal 
salts. It was with this fact before me that in 1832, when I was on 
the coasts of the Southern Ocean, I adopted the opinion which I 
now proclaim in regard to the utility of the salts having a basis of 
ammonia in the phenomena of vegetation. I have stated my views 
on this subject in a memoir published in 1837.* Previous to this 
publication, however, M. Schattenmann, one of the most ingenious 
manufacturers of Alsace, had already directed the attention of hus- 
bandmen to this important matter, by reminding them that it is the 
custom in Switzerland to add sulphate of iron or green vitriol to the 
urine-vats, for the purpose of changing the carbonate of ammonia 
into the sulphate, and thus obtaining a fixed instead of a highly vola- 
tile salt, liable to escape and to be lost. In a communication made 
in 1835 to the agricultural association of Bauchsweiler, M. Schat- 
tenmann announced positively that the drainings from dunghills 
thus prepared, applied upon meadow lands, produced very great 
effects. 

Such, to the best of my knowledge, are the practical facts which 
establish the useful influence of ammonia on the growth of plants 
far better than the experiments of the laboratory could have done. 
Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that long before the dates 
above quoted, Davy had shown that water containing 3-o^th of car- 
bonate of ammonia is singularly favorable to the growth of wheat, 
far more so, under circumstances exactly similar, than the hydro- 
chlorate and the nitrate of the same base ; and this influence, it is 
important to observe, I)avy ascribed to the fact that carbonate of 
ammonia contains carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and azote; in a wcrd, 

* Annales de Chiiiiie, I. Lvv. 2e s6fic, p. 301. 



256 MANURES PRKPAKATION OF DUNG. 

all the elements that are essential to the organization of plants. The 
illustrious English chemist concluded from his experiments, that the 
well-known efficacy of soot, as a manure, is due, in part, to the vol- 
atile alkali which it contains. 

Professor Liebig, in adopting these opinions, has sought to gener- 
alize them ; he has attempted to show, by very delicate experiments, 
that the air which lies immediately over the surface of the ground, 
always contains carbonate of ammonia, and that the same salt can 
be detected in rain and snow, and in spring water. The ammonia 
of the atmosphere, according to Liebig, concurs with that which is 
developed in manures, in the formation of the azotized principles 
proper to vegetables. These ingenious ideas correspond exactly 
with those which M. de Saussure made public in 1802, when he 
ascertained that the gaseous azote of the air is not directly absorbed 
by plants. " If azote be a simple substance, and not an element of 
water," says this celebrated observer, " we must admit that plants 
do not assimilate it, save in vegetable and animal extracts, and in 
the ammoniacal vapors or other compounds soluble in water whicb 
they absorb from the soil, or from the atmosphere. It is impossi- 
ble," he continues, " to doubt the presence of ammoniacal vapors in 
the atmosphere when we see that the pure sulphate of alumina, ex- 
posed to the air, ends by becoming changed into the ammoniacal 
sulphate of alumina."* 

In agricultural establishments, in which the importance of manure 
is duly appreciated, every precaution is taken both for its production 
and preservation. Any expense incurred in improving this vital 
department of the farm, is soon repaid beyond all proportion to the 
outlay. The industry and the intelligence possessed by the farmer, 
may indeed almost be judged of at a glance by the care he bestows 
on his dunghill. It is truly a deplorable thing to witness the neglect 
which causes the vast loss and destruction of manure over a great 
part of these countries. The dunghill is often arranged as if it were 
a matter of moment that it should be exposed to the water collected 
from every roof in the vicinity, as if the business were to take ad- 
vantage of every shower of rain to wash and cleanse it from all it 
contains that is really valuable. The main secret of the admirable 
and successful husbandry of French Flanders may perhaps lie in 
the extreme care that is taken in that country to collect every thing 
that can contribute to the fertility of the soil. Our agricultural so- 
cieties, which are now so universally established, would confer one 
of the greatest services on the community if they would encourage 
by every means at their command economy of manure ; premiums 
awarded to those farmers who should preserve their dunghills in 
the most rational and advantageous uumner, would prove of more 
real service than premiums in many other and more popular direc- 
tions. 

The place where the dung of a farm is laid ought to be rather 
near to the stables and cow-houses. The arrangements may be 

* Kcchcrchcs Chimiques, p. '207. 



MANURES THE DUNG-HEAP. 257 

varied to infinity, but they ought all to combine the following condi- 
tions : 1st. That the drippings from the heap should not run away, 
but should be collected in a tank or cistern under ground ; 2d. That 
no water, except the rain which falls on the dung-heap, or any wa- 
ter that may be thrown upon it on purpose, should be allowed to 
drain into this reservoir ; 3d. That the place for the dunghill be of 
size enough to avoid the necessity of heaping the manure to too 
great a height. The ground upon which the dung is piled ought to 
slope gently one way or another — from each side towards the centre 
is best — so that the drippings may be collected in the tank or cis- 
tern. It is also desirable that the soil underneath should be clayey 
and impermeable ; where it is not so, it becomes necessary to pud- 
dle, to cement, or to pave the bottom of the dunghill stance as well 
as the bottom and sides of the tank or cistern. The water which 
runs from the heap should be thrown back upon it occasionally, by 
means of a pump and hose, so as to preserve it in a state of constant 
moistness. The opening into the tank, which is best placed imme- 
diately under the centre of the dung-heap, is closed by means of a 
strong grating in wood or iron, the bars being sufficiently close to 
prevent the solid matters from passing through. One very impor- 
tant arrangement, one which, in fact, must on no account be over- 
looked, is that the drains from the stables and cOw-houses be so 
contrived, that they all run to the dunghill. The litter, however 
abundant, never absorbs the whole of the urine, especially at the 
time when the cattle are upon green food ; and it would be quite 
unpardonable in the husbandman did he not take measures to se- 
cure this, the most valuable portion of the manure at his disposal. 

The litter mixed with the droppings of the animals, and soaked 
with their urine, ought to be carried from the stables to the dunghill 
upon a light barrow. The practice of dragging out the manure with 
dung-hooks, which is often permitted when the field upon which it 
is to be spread is at no great distance, ought on no account to be al- 
lowed ; the loss from the practice is always considerable. 

Materials ought not to be thrown on the dunghill at random' or 
hap-hazard ; they should be evenly spread and divided ; an uneven 
heap gives rise to vacancies, which by and by become mouldy, to 
the great detriment of the manure. It is of much importance that 
the heap be pretty solid, in order to prevent too great a rise of tem- 
perature, and too rapid a fermentation, which are always injurious. 
Particular care must also be taken that the heap preserves a suffi- 
cient degree of moistness, not only of its surface but of its entire 
mass, which is effected by watering it frequently. At Bechelbronn, 
our dung-heap is so firmly trodden down, in the course of its accu- 
mulation, by the feet of the workmen, that a loaded wagon drawn 
by four horses can be taken across it without very great difficulty. 
The thickness of the heap is not a matter of indifference : besides 
the convenience of loading, which must not be forgotten, any great 
thickness may become injurious by causing the temperature to rise 
too high ; circumstances occurring which should compel us to keep 
a mass in this state for any length of time, the decomposition would 

22* 



258 PREPARATION OF MANURE. 

make such progress as to occasion very great loss. Experience has 
shown that the thickness of a dung-heap ought not to exceed from 
about four feet and a half to six feet and a half; it ought certainly 
never to exceed the latter amount. 

With a view to prevent the drying of the dung-heap and its con- 
sequences, too great a rise in temperature and destruction of manure, 
it is the practice in some places to arrange the dung-heap on the 
nortli side of a building, which is undoubtedly advantageous, but not 
always to be realized, especially in connection with a farm of some 
magnitude, where the immediate vicinity of a large mass of matter 
in a state of putrid fermentation is not only unpleasant, but may be 
unwholesome. In the north of France, the dung-heap is sometimes 
shaded from the sun by means of a row of elms, and the shelter thus 
secured is vastly preferable to that which it has been proposed to 
obtain by means of a roof or shed, which, besides other inconveni- 
ences, would be found costly at first, liable to speedy decay, &c. 
If circumstances, such as the smallness of the farm, the permeable 
nature of the soil, &c., prevent the construction of a reservoir, there 
is risk of the dung-water being quite lost ; but such waste may be 
prevented by covering the bottom of the pit or stance for the dung- 
heap with a bed of sand, peat mail, or any other dry and porous sub- 
stance capable of absorbing liquids. Tliis practice is often followed 
by the farmers of>Alsace. 

In some farms, the dilferent kinds of dung are piled apart from 
one another in particuhir heaps ; that of the stable being put by it- 
self, as well as that of the cow-liouse, that of the hog-stye, and that 
of the sheep-pen. In great establishments, such a separation is 
often one of necessity ; but the advantages which are ascribed to it 
are questionable at least, and the remarks that have been made upon 
it by writers do not appear founded on any accurate observation. 
Without denying tluit certain crops answer better when special ma- 
nures arc emph)yed, it still seems to me more advantageous to pile 
every kind of manure together, when the difficulties of tlie situation 
are not such as to make lliis either particularly inconvenient or ex- 
pensive. In this way, indeed, a dung-heap of medium constitution 
is obtained, which is regarded with reason as that, the application 
of which to the soil is attended with the greatest advantages in the 
majority of instances. The distinction wliich some have sought to 
make between the relative qualities of manures of different origins 
is far too absolute ; and this is the reason, without doubt, which 
renders it so difficult to bring the observations of difiercnt agricultu- 
rists to agree. Thus, according to Sinclair, the dung of the hog- 
slye is the most active of all, the richest in fertilizing principles ; 
according to Schwertz, on the contrary, it is the most indiflerenl 
manure of the farm-yard. 

The fact is, that manures, which are the produce of the same 
animals, often present greater dillcrences in regard to quality, than 
mamires which proceed from diferent sources. I shall show by 
ami by that the value of manure tli'i»ends especially upon the feeding, 
the age, and the condition in which the anhnal is placed that pro- 



PREPARATION OF MANURE. 259 

duces it. It is well known that the dung of cattle, fed during winter 
upon straw, is greatly inferior to that which they yield when con- 
suming food of a more nutritious quality. 

When the litter mixed with animal excrements is accumulated in 
sufficient quantity in the pit or on the dung stance, fermentation 
speedily sets in, and abundance of vapor is disengaged. As car- 
bonate of ammonia is among the volatile products of this decomposi- 
tion, it is of importance to hold it under control ; this is done by 
keeping the heap in a state of proper moistness, and in excluding as 
much as possible the access of air. The daily addition of fresh 
quantities of litter from the stables and stalls, contributes powerfully 
to impede the dispersion of the volatile elements, which it is so im- 
portant to preserve in manure ; duly spread upon the heap, each ad- 
dition becomes, in fact, a fresh obstacle to evaporation ; it forms a 
covering which plays the part of a condenser, at the same time that 
it protects the inferior layers from the direct contact of the air. So 
long as the dung-heap is kept up and attended to in this way, the 
fermentation is limited to the inferior layers of the mass. Thaer 
even satisfied himself that air collected from the surface of a dung- 
heap, undergoing moderate fermentation, does not contain much 
more carbonic acid than that which is taken from the mass of the 
atmosphere. Neither does a vessel containing nitric acid, when 
placed upon the fermenting mass, produce those dense white vapors 
which are a certain indication of the presence of ammonia. The 
slow decomposition which it is of so much importance to effect, is 
not readily secured save in masses sufficiently trodden down, and in 
which the litter of different kinds has been spreacf as evenly as pos- 
sible. 

It is an important point that the manure should be carried out to 
the field before the upper portions recently added begin to undergo 
change, otherwise the whole mass enters into full fermentation, and 
the volatile elements, being no longer arrested by the upper layer, 
escape and are lost. One means of preventing this loss in any case 
(which however can but rarely occur) in which there was a neces- 
sity for suffering the mass to become made through its whole thick- 
ness, would be to cover it with a layer of vegetable mould, in which 
the volatile principles would be condensed ; the layer of earth would 
in fact thus be converted into a most powerful manure. 

The loss of carbonate of ammonia, during the fermentation of 
farm-dung, is further prevented by the use of certain salts which 
have the power of changing the volatile carbonate into a fixed salt. 
It was with a view of bringing a re-action of this kind into play, 
that M. Schattenmann, the able director of the manufactories of 
Bauchsweiler, proposed to add to dung-heaps, in the course of their 
accumulation and preparation, a certain quantity of sulphate of iron 
or of sulphate of lime, either of which is decomposed by the carbo- 
nate of ammonia evolved, and a fixed ammoniacal salt (the sulphate) 
is produced.* The loss of ammonia from dung-heaps in the course 

* Annales de Chiinie, 3e stirie, t. iv. p. 116. 



260 PREPARATION OF MANURE. 

of regulated fermentation, must not however be estimated too hignly ; 
when the decomposition is carefully conducted, the mass having 
been well trodden and properly damped, the loss is really very small. 
The gentle fermentation, secured by these means, has characters 
which differ essentially from those that accompany the rapid putre- 
faction which never fails to take place when matters are not well 
managed. As an example of the rapid and injurious fermentation 
of which I speak, I may cite that which frequently takes place in 
piles of horse-dung : every one must have seen such dung-hills 
loosely thrown together, left to themselves, without any addition of 
water, acquiring a very intense heat in the course of a few days, 
and have even heard of their taking fire. I have seen piles of this 
kind reduced to their merely earthy constituents ! Such are never 
the results of the moderate and gradual decomposition which farm- 
dung ought never to exceed. When the pit or stance is emptied, 
in wliich a slow and equal fermentation has taken place, the superior 
layer is seen to be very nearly in the same state in which it was 
when it was piled ; the layer immediately beneath this one is chang- 
ed in a greater degree, and sometimes exhales a slight ammoniacal 
odor. In the lower strata, the modification is yet greater in degree : 
the straw has lost its consistency, it is fibrous and breaks into pieces 
with the greatest ease ; the mass is also progressively darker in 
color as we go deeper, and on the ground it is completely black ; 
"the smell which this part of the heap exhales, is that of sulphuretted 
hydrogen, and when it is tested, sulphate of iron is discovered ; no 
doubt these sulphurous products are all the consequence of the de- 
composition, under the influence of the organic matter, of the sul- 
phates which were contained in the manure. This is the sign by 
which I know that farm-dung is duly prepared ; the presence of 
sulphurets and of the hydrosulphate of ammonia will have no ill 
effect upon vegetation ; for scarcely is the manure spread upon the 
ground, than these products are changed into sulphates, and then 
the manure emits tliat musky smell which is peculiar to it. Fur- 
ther, there is no doubt but that the state in which a carefully tended 
dung-heap is found in the end, is due to the circumstances in which 
it has been placed and kept during the whole time of its preparation ; 
its constituent elements would have gone through a totally different 
course in tiie progress of their modification had they been left ex- 
posed to the open air. To be satisfied of this, it is enough to re- 
mark the powerful and purely ammoniacal smell which meets us in 
a warm stable, especially during tlie sununer season, upon tiie ground 
of which tlie urine of the animals it contains is left to decompose. 

From wiiat has now been said, it will be understood how destruc- 
tive to good manure is the custom which obtains in certain countries 
of turning dung-hoai)s fiequenlly, of airing them as it were, in order 
to hasten decomposition. Treated in this way, stable litter, &c., 
does in fact decompose much more rai)idly ; but it does so, and I 
own that I do not myself clearly perceive the object proposed by it, 
at the expense of the quality ; for it is very evident that the volatile 



PREPARATION OF MANURE. 261 

principles must be dissipated and lost in the same proportion as their 
points of contact with the air are multiplied. 

The plan of collecting all the litter of the farm into one particular 
and appropriate place, is that which is generally adopted. Never- 
theless, there are countries in which the dung is left to accumulate in 
the cattle-stalls, it being merely covered with fresh straw every day. 
The ground thus rises continually under the feet of the cattle, so 
that it is necessary to have moveable cribs which can also be raised 
by degrees. This method is so far convenient, that the necessity 
for cleaning out the stable continually is avoided ; but little is gain- 
ed in the end in the matter of labor, for the same mass of manure has 
still ultimately to be removed. The fermentation of the manure 
would be greatly accelerated by the usual high temperature of the 
stables, did not the feet of the cattle tread the mass very closely, 
and this and the daily addition of straw together produce the same 
effect as I have indicated in treating of the management of the dung- 
heap out of doors : it condenses vapors and volatile particles, and 
prevents evaporation. The fact is, that in stalls and stables in which 
the dung is allowed to accumulate in this way, we are not sensible 
of any very olTensive odor, and the animals which live in them breathe 
without inconvenience, it being always understood that all communi- 
cation with the exterior is not interrupted, which in fact it ought 
never to be, even in cases where the stables and stalls are kept per- 
fectly clean. This method of proceeding becomes almost impracti- 
cable when cattle are fed upon food that is not dry, but on the contrary 
that is extremely watery, such as roots, green clover, &c. ; the 
quantity of urine that is then passed is so considerable, and the 
excrements themselves are so copious and so liquid, that an enormous 
quantity of straw would be required to absorb the liquid parts ; in 
spite of any reasonable addition of litter, indeed, the animals would 
still be exposed to be kept in the mire, which would doubtless become 
a powerful cause of insalubrity among them. 

In Belgium, according to Schwertz, manure is accumulated in the 
stables by guarding against the inconveniences which the last mode 
of proceeding generally implies. The cattle are placed upon a kind 
of platform raised above the pavement of the stable, and the drop- 
pings being withdrawn from under them, are trodden down and allowed 
to accumulate upon the floor. 

One inconvenience attending the use of straw, is that it is frequently 
dear ; it is also scarce in some countries. In those parts of Swit- 
zerland, for instance, where all the available lands are meadows, they 
are obliged to economize litter as much as possible, so that they 
even wash it, and thus make it serve repeatedly. Although it would 
be difficult to give a reason for a practice which has the effect of 
increasing the bulk of the manure, adding to the expense of transport, 
and at the same time diminishing its quality ; it is, nevertheless, a 
fact that this mode of proceeding has been long in use in various 
Cantons. We probably only see here another means of securing 
even the last particle of the excrementitious matters passed by cat- 
tle, the process employed being in fact identical with that used by 



3583 LIQUID MANURE. 

the chemist in his most delicate analyses. In Switzerland, the urine 
that is passed by the cattle flows along a jrutter which communicates 
with a large reservoir containing water, in which not only are the sol- 
id excrements dillused, but in which tlie litter is washed, this being 
changed only twice a week. The reservoir is constructed under 
the floor of the cow-house itself, in order to be protected from the 
frost. The fermentation of a mass so diluted is scarcely percepti- 
ble, and, save from leakage, there is no loss of decomposing animal 
matter. The liquid manure is raised by means of a pump, and car- 
ried to the meadow in tubs placed upon carts. In Switzerland, it is 
also the usage to employ the urine of cattle separately as manure, 
under the name oi pvrin; to this liquid manure, a quantity of sul- 
phate of iron is frequently added with the view of bringing the volatile 
carbonate to the state of the fixed sulphate of ammonia, as I have 
already said. 

Liquid manures have their advantages and their inconveniences. 
We shall immediately discuss their value comparatively with that 
of solid manures, and we shall be led to adopt the opinion of M. Crud 
in regard to them, viz., that the advantages ascribed to them in Switz- 
erland are exaggerated. Whatever the form under which manures 
are applied, the question has been warmly discussed, whether it be 
to the interest or disadvantage of the agriculturist to employ them 
before or after they have undergone fermentation ] 

Organic substances, however, are in no condition to favor the 
growth of vegetables until they have undergone material changes 
which modify their nature. One of the results of this change, as 
we have seen, is the development of ammoniacal salts. Fresh ma- 
nure, such as it comes from the stable, introduced immediately into 
the ground, there undergoes precisely the same changes, and gives 
rise to the same products as it does when subjected to preparation in 
a dung-heap in the manner already described ; there is only this 
diflerence, that being scattered and iriixed with a large quantity of 
inert matter, the decomposition takes place much more slowly than 
it does in the heap. The question which has been so actively dis- 
cussed, therefore, reduces itself to this : is it advantageous to have 
the manure fermented in the soil it is intended to fertilize ? We 
may be allowed to express surprise that such a question should have 
been raised in the present day, and still more that the affirmative 
answer should have been disputed by agriculturists of distinguished 
merit. Some have even gone so far as to maintain that fresh e.x- 
crements were injurious to vegetation. Proofs to the contrary are 
readily obtained ; it is enough to recollect that in the grazing and 
folding of sheep and kine, the dung and urine pass directly into the 
ground of our pastures and fields, and who shall say that the land 
is not benefited by what it thus receives ? Unquestionably fresh 
manure in excess proves injurious to vegetables, but as much may 
be said in regard to the best-fermented dungs. 

M. Gazzeri, an Italian chemist, has devoted himself with the 
most laudable perseverance to inquiries having for their object to 
show that the general custom of leaving manures to become de- 



VALUE OF FRESH AND MADE MANURES. 263 

composed before leading them out to the field is attended with a 
considerable loss of fertilizing principles, and that it is therefore 
advantageous to use them in the state in which they come from the 
stable. To remove all doubts which might yet be entertained upon 
the effects of unfermented manures, M. Gazzeri showed that wheat 
could be successfully grown in land which had received an extraor- 
dinary dose of pigeon's dung, which is regarded as one of the most 
active of all manures ; and horse droppings, taken at the moment 
they were passed, mixed with earth, in the proportion of one-fourth 
of the whole bulk, had no injurious effect on the growth of the 
cereals. To ascertain the amount of loss which fresh manures suf- 
fered from fermentation, M. Gazzeri placed certain quantities, as- 
certained by weight, to putrefy under favorable circumstances ; and 
the decomposition completed, he weighed them again. In this wa}', 
he ascertained that horse-dung, in the course of four months, lost 
more than the half of the dry matter which it contained before its 
putrefaction. Davy, indeed, had already shown that there is a loss 
of volatile principles, during the decomposition of fresh manures, 
that must be useful to vegetation. Davy's experiment consisted in 
introducing manure into a retort, the extremity of which communi- 
cated with the soil under turf, and he found that in the course of a 
few days the grass which was thus exposed to the emanations from 
the retort, grew with particular luxuriance. Although it appears 
certain, then, that in conducting the preparation of manure in the 
heap with prudence, the volatile and ammoniacal principles which 
appear in the course of the putrefaction may be retaine^ it is never- 
theless unquestionable that the employment of manure directly and 
without previous fermentation, would most effectually prevent the 
loss of matters that must be valuable. Thaer, Schwertz, Mr. Coke, 
and others, have consequently admitted the advantages of the latter 
procedure. In agreeing with them completely, which I do, it still 
remains certain that on the greater number of farms, dung-heaps 
must be formed as matter of necessity. Manure is only available at 
certain determinate seasons of the year ; it cannot be carried out 
and spread as it is produced. In Alsace it is carried out to the fields 
on which it is to be spread whenever circumstances will permit, and 
without regard to its more or less advanced state of decomposition. 
The circumstances which lead to its being kept in the pit for two or 
three months, also lead to the manure being half or more than half 
matured before it is led out ; and this, after all, is perhaps the best 
state in which it can be put into the ground. It is then easily incor- 
porated with the soil, and its fertilizing principles are already in that 
condition which enables them to act, within a limited lime, with 
greater energy than they would do were the manure employed quite 
fresh. This is the condition in which our manures almost always 
are at Bechelbronn when we carry them out : it rarely happens that 
they have been three months on the stance before their removal. 
Speediness of action is a point which is not without importance. 
Fresh dung will always act more slowly than that which has reach- 
ed a certain point of decomposition, and the advantage which mostly 



264 VALUE OF FRESH AND MADE MANURES. 

accrues to the fanner in forcinn: liis crops, will often induce him to 
use manure that lias ripened in llie pit or stance. 

In warm and moist countries, as may be conceived, it is almost 
matter of indilference whether the duno: be put into the ground quite 
fresh, or in a state of decomposition further advanced ; its decom- 
position, aided by the heat of the climate, is always effected rapidly 
enough. But it is otherwise in cold climates, where the tempera- 
ture which excites and maintains vegetation is often of short dura- 
tion, and must at once be taken advantage of. During a great part 
of the year, the ground is so cold that organic substances buried in 
it are preserved with comparatively little change. Under such 
climatic conditions, there is no doubt that manures in a state of for- 
wardness are to be preferred. It is probably from such motives 
that the extensive use of liquid manures in .Switzerland is derived, 
the action of these being, so to speak, immediate ; and it is with 
such manure that in Flanders the cultivation of vaiious plants that 
are of great value in manufacturing processes, is carried on. 

When the fermentation of manure has been managed discreetly, 
and all the precautions requisite to prevent the dissipation of ammo- 
niacal salts and the loss of soluble elements have been taken, there 
is the immense advantage attending it, besides obtaining immediate 
action, that a manure is produced of greater value under a smaller 
bulk and a less weight. The dung-heap often loses a third of its 
bulk in undergoing fermentation, a circumstance which occasions an 
important saving in carriage. A like saving may be effected with 
reference to fresh manures, by drying them in the sun, which I have 
sometimes Seen done ; they are thus reduced to one-third or one- 
fourth of their original weight, and when the distance to which they 
have to be carried is great, there may be real advantage in proceed- 
ing in this way. 

An objection of some moment made to the use of fresh dung to 
corn lands is, that it usually contains the seeds of weeds and the 
eggs of insects which nothing but putrefaction will destroy. This 
objection of course loses all its weight when the land that is ma- 
nured is to receive a crop which admits of hoeing ; and the custom 
which obtains with us at Bechelbronn of using manure in every 
state of decomposition to the first crop in the rotation, is a guaran- 
tee that fresh manure is really productive of no inconvenience in 
practice. Another difficulty pointed out by Thaer, is that of cover- 
ing in dung so long and full of straw as fresh stable or stall dung. 
This objection disappears when the manure is laid in furrows formed 
by the plougli, as is done in Alsace, by which means the covering in 
is effected by a single operation. 

If opinions are still divided upon the question whether dung ought 
to be employed before or after fermentation, they are no less so as to 
the mode of spreading it, and the best periods for laying it on the 
land. It may be imagined that tlic conclusion come to upon the first 
question necessarily influences the opinions held on the second. 
Those who believe that manure may be advantageously used in the 
state in which it comes from the stables, are altogether indifferent in 



SPREADING OF MANURE. 265 

regard to the times of carrying it out. They take advantage of every 
leisure moment that occurs for performing this necessary work, which 
is no trifling advantage ; it is the practice which we follow at Be- 
chelbronn — we carry out our manure as we find opportunity. The 
lands which are to be manured in the spring have frequently their 
supply carried out during winter when the frost enables us to get 
upon them. The dung first shot down in little heaps, at regular 
distances, is afterwards spread as equally as possible, frequently 
even upon the snow ; and I have never seen any ill effect from the 
practice. The custom which some farmers have of keeping dung in 
large heaps in the field, in order that it may be all spread and work- 
ed under at tlie same time by the plough, is certainly objectionable ; 
the places upon which these heaps have been laid are evidently too 
strongly manured ; no manure, save that which is quite fresh and 
very long in the .straw, or which it is proposed to spread immediate- 
ly in furrows, ought ever to be laid down in large heaps upon the 
field. 

The method which I have recommended, of leaving manure spread 
over the surface of the fields exposed to the weather for several 
weeks or months, has been severely criticised. By such exposure, 
it has been said the dung must lose its volatile elements, and the 
rain must wash out and carry off its more soluble parts. Influenced 
by such fears, some farmers do not spread their dung until the mo- 
ment of ploughing it in. Such diversity of opinion among practical 
men, all personally interested in deriving the greatest possible amount 
of advantage from the manure they employ, must not be thought of 
lightly : when different modes of procedure in agriculture are the 
subjects of debate, we must not be in too great a hurry to come to 
general conclusions. Climate is not without its influence in the 
question which now engages us. In Alsace, experience has pro- 
nounced in favor of the practice followed ; but in other countries 
there may be very good reasons for not proceeding in the same way. 
In Alsace, where the annual depth of rain amounts to 26.7 inches, 
no more than 4.3 inches fall during the three months of December, 
January, and February. In a district where a larger quantity of 
rain falls during the winter, the manure would probably suffer from 
the procedure followed in Alsace. 

The quality of the manure must also be taken into consideration. 
A dunghill which contained a large proportion of carbonate of am- 
monia, which exhaled a strong smell of volatile alkali, would infal- 
libly lose in value by any unnecessary or prolonged exposure to the 
air ; but the loss becomes insignificant when the manure, by good 
management, is brought to contain but a small proportion of volatile 
ammoniacal salts, as happens with manures which have received 
additions of gypsum ; or otherwise, when the dung-heap has been 
carried out fresh, and at a season so cold that it can be kept without 
material change until the period arrives for spreading it over or 
working it into the ground. When the rains are not excessive, 
the soluble parts of manure spread upon the ground penetrate and 
remain in its upper stratum, exactly as happens when, instead of 

23 



266 ELEMENTARY COMPOSITION OF MANURE. 

being buried, it is spread upon the herbage in full growth. The 
j)lan of top-dressing is often of great use, and is another and a prac- 
tical proof of how little detriment results from leaving manure ex- 
posed to atmospherical vicissitudes. The procedure by top-dressing 
has arisen from necessity : it was first resorted to with the view of 
giving the land an addition to the inadequate dose of manure which 
it had received before it was sown ; but it has been found to answer 
so well in many districts, that it has been continued. We have em- 
ployed it at IBechelbronn upon various occasions, even to hoed crops, 
and with decided advantage, the main one being, that time was gained 
for the production of manure. 

In the district of Marck, the practice of top-dressing lands sowed 
with winter grain, is rapidly gaining ground; the dressing takes 
place when the blade is already above ground ; and experience proves 
tliat the passage of the wagons over the field, and the feet of the 
liorses and the men, cause no appreciable mischief; all traces of 
them very soon disappear. Nevertheless it is decidedly better to 
take advantage of a hard frost, when the land will bear carts, 
&c., for the performance of the process. This plan, according to 
Schwartz, is found to answer extremely well in Switzerland, for 
hemp, and indeed for almost every thing else. In my opinion, top- 
dressing ought to be viewed as a means of giving the soil, already 
under a crop, the manure which we had been compelled to refuse it 
at an earlier period. Still, Thaer assures us, and his authority is 
always of great weight, that he has too frequently seen the good 
etTects of top-dressings to beans, peas, and leguminous crops in gen- 
eral, not to be satisfied of the general advantages of the method, in 
connection with light soils especially, in which the sowing may have 
been late. 

The elementary composition of farm-dung is a point which is not 
undeserving of consideration. I have made repeated analyses of 
that of Bechelbronn, operating upon it in a medium state of decom- 
position. The animals which had produced this dung were thirty 
liorses, thirty oxen, and from ten to twenty hogs. The absolute 
quantity of moisture was ascertained by first drying in the air a con- 
siderable weight of dung, and, after pounding, continuing and com- 
pleting the drying of a given quantity in the oil-bath, in vacuo, at a 
temperature of 230° F. 

The dung prepared in the winter of the year — 

1H37-8 contained 20.4 > per rent, of 

1838-9 2-2.'2 i dry matter. 

Prepared in summer of 1839 19.6 

Medium 20.7 

Water 793 

Analysis yielded the following results : 

Times of preparation. Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Azote. Ashes. 

Winter of 1837-8 32.4 3.8 25.8 1.7 36.3 

32.5 4.1 26.0 17 35.7 

" 38.7 4.5 28.7 1.7 2G.4 

Spring of 1838 36.4 4.0 19.1 2.4 38.1 

" 1839 40.0 4.3 27.0 2.4 25.7 

«< " :M.5 4.3 27.0 2.0 3^.5 



COMPOSITION OF PAKM-YARD DUNG. 267 

On the average, farm-dung dried at 238° contains : 

Carbon 35.8 

Hydrogen 4.2 

Oxygen 25.8 

Azote 2.0 

Salts and earths 32.2 

100.0 

When moist, its composition is represented by — 

Carbon 7.41 

Hydrogen 0.87 

Oxygen 5.34 

Azote 0.41 

Salts and earths 6.67 

Water 79.30 

100.0 

The constitution of dung-heaps must of necessity vary ; those, 
however, wliich have a common origin do not seem to present very 
great differences in the proportion of tiieir elements. Thus, horse- 
dung, in the south tjf France, yieUled, on analysis, in the dry state, 
2.4 per cent, of azote. This manure contained only 61 per cent, of 
moisture. 

Did we but know the composition and the quantity of the excre- 
.tions passed, in the course of the twenty-four hours, by the various 
animals whicli contribute to the production of manure, we should be 
able to determine approximatively what the elements are which have 
been eliminated in the course of the fermentation. It would be suf- 
ficient to compare the elementary matter in the litter, or fresh dung, 
as it comes from the stable, with that which exists in the fermented 
or prepared manure. I have data which I think sufficient to enable 
me to institute this comparison. It must always be borne in mind, 
however, that the analyses which I shall now detail were made 
upon the excrements of a single individual of each kind. It would 
certainly have been preferable to have had average analyses of 
average qualities ; but the object I had in view, when I undertook 
these experiments, was quite different from that which I have now 
before me. 

EXCRETIONS OF THE HORSE.* 

The horse was fed upon hay and oats. The urine and the excre- 
ments together contained 76.2 per cent, of moisture. In twenty-four 
hours the excretions weighed — moist, 34.2 lbs. ; dry, 8.1 lbs. 

Their composition was found to be — 

In the dry Elate. Moist ditto. 

Carbon 38.G 9.19 

Hydrogen .5.0 1.20 

Oxygen 3G.4 8.66 

Azote 2.7 4.13 

Salts and earth 17.3 4.13 

Water " 76.17 

100.0 100.0 

* The size of the horse was rather below the average usual size of farm horses. 



2(5S COMPOSITION OF FARM-YARD DUNG. 



EXCRETIONS OF THE COW. 

The cow was fed upon hay and raw potatoes. The urine and the 
excrements together contained 86.4 of moisture. The weight of 
the excretions, in twenty-four hours, was — moist, 80.5 lbs. ; dry, 
10.9 lbs. 

Their composition by analysis was : 

Dry. Wet. 

Carbon 39.8 5-39 

Hydrogen 4-7 0.64 

Oxygen 355 4.81 

Azote 2.6 0-36 

falls and earth 17-4 2.36 

Water • " 86.44 

100-0 100.00 



EXCRETIONS OF THE PIG. 

The pigs, upon which the observations were made, were from six 
to eio-ht months old. They were fed upon steamed potatoes. The 
urine and the excrements lost by drying 82 per cent, of moisture. 
The average of the excretions yielded by one pig in twenty-four 
hours was : moist, 9.1 lbs. ; dry, 1.6 lb. 

Composition : 

^ . Dry. Moist. 

Carbon 38.7 6.97 

Hydrogen 4-8 0.86 

Oxygen 32-5 5.85 

Azote 3.4 0.61 

Salts and earth 20.6 87.1 

Water ••• " 82-00 

100.0 100.00 

The litter that is generally employed is wheat-straw. This straw, 
in the condition in which it is used, contains 26 per cent, of moist- 
ure. 

Its composition is : 

Dried. Undried. 

Carbon 48.4 35.8 

Hydrogen 5.3 3.9 

Oxygen 38.9 28-8 

Azote 0.4 00-3 

Salts and earth 7-0 5-2 

Water ■_^ ;;_ 26-0 

100.0 100-0 

At Bechelbronn each horse receives daily as litter 4.4 lbs. ; each 
cow 6.6 lbs. ; each pig 4.1 lbs. of straw. 

To the stables and the cow-houses together are given every 
twenty-four hours 132.0 lbs. of straw for thirty horses ; 198.0 lbs. 
for thirty honied cattle ; 66.0 lbs. for sixteen pigs; making 396.0 
lbs. of straw, estimated when dry at 292.6 lbs. 

The composition of the materials which constitute the dung pro- 
duced in one day are set forth in tiie following table : 



COMPOSITION OF FARM-YARD DUNG. 



269 



Excretions yielded 
in 24 tioiu-s by 


Weight 
when dry. 


Weight 


Elements of the dry matter. 


Water 

tnlg- the 
wet matter 


in the wet 
state. 


Carb. 


Hydroj 


Oxygen 


Azote. 


Salts & 
earths. 


Thirty horses 

Thirty horned cattle 

Sixteen pigs 

Straw used in Utter 


lbs. 
245.08 
.326.30 
26.40 
292.60 


lbs. 

1028.28 

2416.48 

146.74 

396.00 


lbs. 
94.00 
130.24 
10.12 
41.68 


lbs. 
12.32 
15.40 

1.32 
15.62 


lbs. 

89.10 

116.16 

8.58 

113.74 


lbs. 
6.60 
8.58 
0.88 
1.10 


lbs. 

42.46 

56.98 

5.50 

20.46 


lbs. 

783.20 

2089.12 

120.34 

103.40 



The average or mean composition of this mixture may be taken 
as follows : 



In the dry state. 


In (he wet state. 


CarboD. 


Hydrog. 


Oxygen. 


Azote. 


Salts. 


Carbon. 


Hydrog. 


Oxygen. 


Azote. 


Salt. 


Water. 


42.3 
35.8 


5.0 

4.2 


30.7 
25.8 


1.9 
2.0 


14.1 

"hat of t 

32.2 


9.4 

le resultin 

7.4 


1.2 

g Dung : 

0.9 


8.2 
5.3 


0.4 
0.4 


3.2 
6.7 


77.6 
79.3 



On comparing the composition of the dung-heap with that of the 
different kinds of litter collected in a day, little difference is ob- 
served ; the larger quantity of saline and earthy matters discovered 
in the fermented manure is readily explained from the additions of 
ashes incorporated with it, and also by the accidental admixture of 
earthy matters proceeding from the sweepings of the court, the 
earth adhering to the roots consumed as food, &c. — refuse of every 
kind, the residue after cleansing the various kinds of fodder for the 
stable and stall, &c., all goes to the dung-heap. Lastly, and with 
reference to the elements that are liable to be dissipated in the state 
of gas, or which may be changed into water, the azote is percepti- 
bly in larger quantity in the prepared manure than in the unfer- 
mented litter and excretions. This is at once seen on comparing 
the composition of these two products after the^ saline and earthy 
matters have been deducted. 

Carbon. Hydrogen. - Oxygen. Azote. 

The composition of fresh Utter, is 49-3 5.8 42.7 2 

Thatofdung 52.8 6.1 33.1 3.0 

Dung is, therefore, somewhat richer in carbon than litter, and it 
contains less oxygen. It is the property of lignine undergoing de- 
composition, that it yields a product which relatively abounds more 
in carbon than the original matter, in spite of the carbonic acid 
■which is formed and thrown off during the alterations undergone ; 
this is owing to the elements of water being thrown off in relatively 
still larger quantity at the same time. 

Fermented dung contains less oxygen than that which comes 
from the stable ; it ought also to contain less hydrogen : but this 
analysis does not proclaim. It must be observed, however, that the 

23* 



270 DURABILITY OF MANURES. 

quantity of oxygen (1.6,) the loss of which appears would require 
no more than 0.57 of hydrogen to constitute water ; and this is a 
quantity vvhinh it is impossible to answer for in experiments made 
upon such substances without excessive delicacy of manipulation. 
This much may be certainly concluded, viz., that manure which has 
undergone preparation contains a larger relative proportion of azote 
than the substances which have concurred in its production ; and for 
this reason, it is very probable that upon the whole a very trifling 
loss of this clement is experienced if the fermentation has been 
carefully managed, and the manure has been carried out and dis- 
tributed upon the land before its decomposition is too far advanced. 
This conclusion, which I am particularly anxious to establish, is 
partly explained by the interesting researches of Mr. Hermann, 
which go to prove that woody fibre in rotting attracts and fixes a 
quantity of the atmospheric air. 

Azote is in fact the element which it is of highest importance to 
augment and to preserve in dung. The organic substances which 
are the most advantageous in producing manures are precisely those 
which give origin by their decomposition to the largest proportion 
of azotized matters soluble or volatile. I say by their decomposi- 
tion, because the mere presence of azote in matters of organic ori- 
gin does not suffice to constitute them manure. Coal, for example, 
contains azote in very appreciable quantity ; and yet its ameliorating 
influence upon the soil is absolutely null ; this happens from coal 
resisting the action of those atmospheric agencies which determine 
that putrid fermentation, the ultimate result of which is always the 
production of ammoniacal salts, or other azotized compounds favor- 
able to the growth of vegetables. While we admit the high impor- 
tance, indeed the absolute necessity of azotic principles in manures, 
then, we must not therefore conclude that these principles are the 
only ones which contribute to fertilize the earth. 

It is unquestionable that the alkaline and earthy salts are further 
indispensable to the accomplishment of the phenomena of vegeta- 
tion ; and it is far from being sufficiently shown that the organic 
principles void of azote play a merely passive part when added to 
the soil. But with few exceptions, the iixed salts, water or its ele- 
ments, and carbon superabouud in manure. The element which 
exists there in smallest proportion is azote, which is the one also that 
is most apt to be dissipated during the alteration of the bodies that 
contain it. For these reasons azote is really the element whose 
presence it is of highest moment to ascertain ; its proportion is that 
in fact which fixes the comparative value of dillcrent manures. 

Since it is by undergoing modification in the course of their de- 
composition by putrefaction that those azotized substances which are 
favorable to vegetation are developed in quaternary compounds, it 
will be readily understood that all things else i)eing equal, a manure 
which is completely decompoundable into soluble or gaseous products 
in the course of a single season, will exert in virtue of this alone 
the whole of its useful influence upon the first crop. It is entirely 
diflTcrcnt if the manure decomposes more slowly ; its action upon the 



STRAW, STEMS, ETC. 271 

first crop will be less obvious, but its influence will continue longer. 
There are manures which act, it may be said, at the moment they 
are put into the ground ; there are others, the action of which con- 
tinues during several years. Nevertheless two manures, although 
acting within periods so different in point of extent, will produce 
the same final result if they severally contain the same dose of 
azotic elements, if they are of the same intrinsic value. 

The durability of manures, the length of time during which they 
will continue to exert their influence, is a matter of great impor- 
tance. It often depends on their state of cohesion, or on their in- 
solubility, though climate and the nature of the soil have also a 
marked influence on their decomposition and consequent eflfects. It 
is not easy in the present state of knowledge to predict with cer- 
tainty how long the beneficial effects of a given manure will con- 
tinue to be felt ; but we know well enough what will hasten the 
decomposition of manure, and what will retard this final result, and 
so apportion as it were the fertilizing principles among the diffierent 
crops in the rotation. Aware of the importance of azote in manures, 
M. Payen and I undertook an extensive series of analyses, with a 
view to ascertain the proportion of this principle in the various mat- 
ters and mixtures made use of in the improvement of the soil. This 
labor enabled us to class manures; and assuming farm-dung as the 
standard, to refer each to its place in a comparative scale, I shall 
give the conclusions to which we came in the tabular form ; but be- 
fore doing this, I think it necessary to premise a few observations 
upon the several manures, or substances usually employed in prepar- 
ing manures. 

Straw, woody stems, haum, leaves, and weeds. The straw of 
corn, the haura and stalks of various plants of farm growth, weeds of 
all kinds, and leaves collected in the woods, all contribute to in- 
crease the supply of manure. 

Straw is the article that is generally employed for litter ; its hol- 
low tubular structure, which makes it apt to imbibe urine, renders it 
peculiarly valuable for this purpose ; and it at the same time sup- 
plies a soft and warm bed for the cattle. The weight of the straw 
used as litter may be doubled by the absorption of urine and admix- 
ture with excrements ; but it is by its very nature and of itself a 
manure which is not to be slighted, since it contains from 2 to 6 
thousandths of azote. 

The stems of leguminous plants — bean and pea straw — are much 
more highly azotized than the straw of corn ; it is certainly best to 
consume this article as forage when it is not too woody and hard. 
As litter it is often unfit to form a good bed for cattle, and should 
therefore not be so employed alone ; but it presents the twofold ad- 
vantage of adding to the manure a large proportion of azotized prin- 
ciples, and at the same time of effecting a saving of straw. At 
Bechelbronn we have found it very advantageous to mix a certain 
quantity of the dried stems of the Madia sativa (gold of pleasure) 
with both our cowhouse and stable litter. 

In forest districts, the leaves of trees are frequently used as lit- 



272 LEAVES BEAN-STRAW. 

ter ; they perhaps absorb urine in smaller quantities than straw does, 
but as they are much more hifrhly azotized, tiiey greatly improve the 
quality of the dung. It is desirable that the materials used for litter 
should be capable of imbibing a large quantity of liquid ; and these 
same materials are by so much the more advantageous as tiie pro- 
portion of azote which enters into their composition is high. The 
leaves of trees combine both of these conditions, and are therefore 
an immense resource in districts where they can be procured in 
abundance. Where the woods are strictly preserved, the removal 
of the leaves is generally prohibited ; and it is doubtless injurious 
to deprive the soil of them in young plantations ; but where the tim- 
ber is further advanced, the objections to their removal are infinitely 
less, and it is therefore generally permitted to carry them away 
within certain limits. And when it is seen that from natural causes 
a great part of the leaves is actually lost to the soil of the forest, 
the wind sweeping them into the ravines, whence they are carried 
away by the rains, it is evidently far better to allow the poorer cul- 
tivators to profit by them. The benefit obtained appears the greater, 
as the time and labor bestowed in collecting the leaves is not taken 
into the reckoning. 

Bean straw, and other stalks of a very hard and thready nature, 
make but indifferent litter, they are often so hard that they hurt cat- 
tle ; and then their cuticle being impermeable, they absorb little or no 
urine. It has been proposed to crush them in the mill or to cut them 
in pieces, but either of these processes is attended with expense. 
The best thing to do would sometimes be to place them where they 
would get crushed under the wheels of the farm carts. The use of 
woody stems of every description would be attended with unques- 
tionable saving in the useful article of straw, and it must never be 
forgotten that to economize straw as litter, is to increase the quan- 
tity of available forage. If, for example, it were possible to reduce 
to the state of litter the woody stems of the Jerusalem artichoke in 
places where this vegetable is grown to any extent, the advantages 
would be very decided ; the quantity of these stalks collected from 
an acre may amount to from four to five tons ; the pith of which 
they are almost entirely composed is of a very spongy nature and 
well fitted to absorb fiuids. These stalks are light, and properly 
bruised, would probably replace an equal weight of straw, first as 
litter and then as an element of the dunghill, instead of being burn- 
ed as at present to heat the oven or to boil the copper, which seerns 
of all methods the worst to derive any advantage from the woody 
haum, whether of the Jerusalem artichoke, the potato, rape, &c. 
These substances contain about 4 per 1000 of azote, and are most 
profitably transformed mto manure. We have found that by placing 
them at the bottom of the dung-heaps, they end by undergoing de- 
composition ; even the most woody stems of vegetables, indeed, de- 
compose pretty raj)idly when they are impregnated with urine and 
mixed with the droppings of animals. Mere moisture without other 
addition does not suffice, they then rot with extreme slowness. 

The green parts of vegetables buried in the ground with the wa- 



GREExN ma:voi;es. 873 

ter tl»ey contain, undergo decomposition rapidly ; the best plan of 
using them as manure would therefore be to plough them in at once, 
were there not certain objections to this. In the first place it cannot 
always be done, on account of the season and the crops upon the 
ground ; and then it might be imprudent to return to the earth the 
noxious weeds which had just been pulled up, frequently full of 
seeds, which would not fail to make their existence known before 
long. It is besides often impossible to bring loads of weeds to the 
farmstead ; the best thing that can then be done is to change them 
rapidly into manure in a corner of one of the fields which has pro- 
duced them. This is readily accomplished by means of lime ; a 
bed is first made of the weeds about 14 inches thick, this is then 
covered with a thin layer of quick-lime, from half an inch to an inch 
in thickness ; another layer of weeds is laid on, and then another 
layer of quick-lime, and so on in succession. After a few hours the 
action between the dry lime and the moist herbage begins, and it 
may be so intense as even to go the length of burning, to prevent 
which the pile must be covered with earth or with turf, and every 
means used to prevent the access of air. The process is generally 
complete within twenty-four hours, and the heap may then be spread 
as manure. Before proceeding to such an operation, however, it 
would be highly proper to calculate its cost. All depends on the 
price of the lime and the labor; and all things considered, I myself 
much doubt whether the plan could be followed with advantage. 

Green manures. Under this title I include the green parts of 
vegetables which form part of our crops, such as the haum of po- 
tatoes, the outer leaves of carrots, cabbages, beet, turnips, &c. 
These articles are at once forage and manure, and it is for the hus- 
bandman to decide in conformity with his position and particular 
resources whether he ought to bury them at once, or to use them 
first as food for cattle. 

From my own experience I should say that the leaves of beet 
and of turnips, and potato haum were articles which ought only to 
be given to cattle in cases of necessity. It is generally much better 
to bury them in the ground immediately after tlie crop is gathered ; 
if they be very indifferent food, they are on the contrary excellent 
manure, superior in quality even to the best farm dung. From the 
experiments I have made on this subject, I find that the potato tops 
from an acre of ground may be ef^ual to 6 or 7 hundred weight of 
that manure presumed to be dry ; and the leaves of the beet, from 
the same extent of surface, are equal to more than 21 hundred 
weight of the same manure, also in a state of dryness. It is among 
green manures that w^e are to class the sea-weed or marine plants, 
which in many places are employed for improving the soil. These 
cryptogamic plants, which abound in azote, have a fertilizing power 
superior to that of common dung, a fact which explains the great 
store which is set in Brittany by the sea-weed that is collected on 
its coasts. Sea-weed is employed either fresh and as it comes from 
the sea, or half dried or macerated, or roasted, and even partially 
burned. It appears to act at once in virtue of the azotized or- 



274 GREEN MANURES — SEA-WEED. 

ganic matters which it contains, of the hygrometric properties which 
it possesses, and of the saline substances which enter into its com. 
position. The agriculturists of Brittany have employed sea-weed 
as manure from time immemorial ; and so have the people of 
Scotland and Ireland. In Brittany, the sea-weed is gathered at 
periods fixed by law. The first gathering, as well as that which 
has been cast up by the waves, is given up to the poor. The gath- 
erings then take place at regular intervals by means of a kind of 
cutting rake. The sea-weed cut from the rocks is piled upon rafts 
or thrown into barges, and carried to the shore ; and there is a tiade 
carried on in the article all along the shores of the channel between 
Genest and Cape La Hogue, from the Chansey Isles, and from the 
coast of Calrados. 

When sea-weed is employed in the fresh state, it is ploughed in 
as speedily as possible. For those kinds of crops which require made 
manures, the sea-weed is stratified with dung and so left to ferment. 
In some places the sea-weed is roasted or imperfectly burned, by 
which, while a large proportion of the vegetable tissue is destroyed, 
an azotized product is still left behind. Before burning the sea- 
weed, it is exposed for a time to the air and the rain, and it is then 
dried, being frequently turned. In this state, it is even used as fuel 
in places where wood is scarce. One great advantage in sea-weed 
which has been particularly indicated, is its total freedom from the 
seeds of noxious weeds. 
> Aquatic -plants which grow in fresh water.may also be emj)loyed 
as manure ; the common reed cut and buried green, decomposes 
rapidly. And here I may mention that to destroy reeds which are 
often a cause of great annoyance in ponds, Schwertz recommends 
lowering the water about 10 inches, cutting the plant, and then rais- 
ing the water to its old level ; the water enters the interior of the 
stems and they all die in a very short space of time. 

Crops which are buried green, for the improvement of the soil, 
are also to be ranked in the list of the manures which now engage 
ns. The plan of burying green crops dates from the most remote an- 
tiquity ; it was greatly recommended by the Romans, and is followed 
in Italy at the present day. The plants usually grown for the pur- 
pose of being burned green are colza or colewort, rape, buckwheat, 
tares, trefoil, &c. The preference, however, is given to one or 
other of the leguininous j)lants, such as tares, lupins, &c., plants 
which appear to have the highest power of extracting azotized prin- 
ciples from the atmosphere ; and indeed the value of the whole pro- 
cess is founded upon this fact, for otherwise it would be imjiossible 
to give any reason for this long accredited mode of improving the 
soil. This, too, is one of the ways in which fallowing becomes use- 
ful ; it is not merely the rest which the land thus obtains, it is also 
benefited by the vegetables whicli grow upon it spontaneously, which 
come to maturity and die, leaving in this way in the gi'ound all they 
had attracted from the atmosphere, or fixed from the water with 
which they had been supplied. 

Seeds, Oil-cake. It is in the seed that by lUr the largest propor- 



OIL-CAKE MANURE. 275 

tion of the azotized matter assimilated by vegetables during their 
growth is finally concentrated at the period of their maturity. Seeds 
are consequently very powerful manures, and great advantage is 
taken of them. In Tuscany, lupin seed is sold as manure ; it con- 
tains 3^ per cent, of azote. It is employed after its germinating 
power has been destroyed by boiling or roasting. The cultivation 
of the lupin is carried on in districts, the situation of which is such 
that difficulty would be experienced in exporting more bulky crops. 
Grains from the brewery would also make excellent manure were it 
not generally found more advantageous to use them as food for cat- 
tle. In some places, however, where there is no adequate demand 
for them in this direction, they are dried upon a kiln, and are then 
equal to twice and a half their weight of farm dung ; in some places 
they are actually sold at a proportionate price. The state of divis- 
ion of grains admits of their being regularly spread. In some parts 
of England, grains are used in the proportion of from 40 to 50 
bushels per acre for wheat or barley.* 

The refuse of the grape in wine countries contains a large quantity 
of azotized matter. The decomposition of the grape stones being 
slow, this refuse answers admirably as a manure for vines. 

Oleaginous seeds after the extraction of the oil leave a residue 
which is an article of commerce, and is familiarly known under the 
name of cake. Oil contains no appreciable quantity of azote ; this 
principle is contained entirely in the cake, which becomes through 
this alone most excellent manure. The proportion of azote which 
cake contains, varies from 3^ to 9 per cent. Oil-cake, from its mode 
of preparation, contains but very little moisture, and consequently of- 
fers great facilities in the way of carriage ; it may be taken without 
difficultytosituations whither a load of dung could scarcely be carried. 

Cake is applied in two modes : 1st. In powder, and by sowing 
upon the field, sometimes mixed with the seed. 2d. Mixed in water 
or in the drainings of the dung-hill, in which case the liquid contain- 
ing the products of the decomposition of the cake is distributed over 
the land. By putrefaction under water, cake yields a matter of ex- 
treme fetor, comparable both in point of smell and of effects on vege- 
tation to human excrement obtained from privies. 

Although cake, from the large proportion of albumen and legumen 
which it contains, be an excellent food for cattle, it is still found 
more advantageous in many districts to use it as manure than for 
feeding. England imports oil-cake from all parts of the continent. 
France alone, from 1836 to 1840, exported more than 117,860 tons 
of the article. Oil-cake has been particularly recommended as 
manure for light sandy soils. When the soil is clayey and cold, 
Schwertz recommends a mixture of one part of lime and 6 parts of 
powdered cake. To me, however, the addition of lime has always 
appeared a questionable auxiliary in such manures as give rise readily 
to ammoniacal products, as is the case with oil-cake. For clayey 
lands, it would perhaps be advisable to employ oil-cake in a state of 

* Sinclair, Agriculture, vol. i. 



276 KEFUSE OF BEET AS MANURE. 

decomposition and diffused in water ; its effects, I imagine, would 
not be doubtful. 

Oil-cake, as a manure, is employed at very different seasons, ac- 
cording to the nature of the husbandry. It is always well to employ 
it in rainy weather. Its effect is always certain, if it comes on to 
rain two or three weeks after it has been put into the ground. 
Drought suspends its action ; it frequently happens, indeed, that the 
first crop shows none of its good efi'ects ; but these never fail to ap- 
pear in subsequent crops. Schwertz remarks very properly, that 
this circumstance has led many farmers to overlook the real advan- 
tages that belong to this manure. Cake, in fact, according to the 
dryness or moistness of tlie season, may act as a manure either of 
difficult or of easy decomposition, and so produce more immediate or 
more remote effects. In England about 800 weight of oil-cake per 
acre are commonly applied. Mr. Coke, of Holkham, ploughed in the 
powdered cake about six weeks before sowing turnips, but it is held 
more economical and more advantageous to strew it in fine powder 
along the furrow with the seed. The latter view, however, must not 
he too confidently acted on by farmers ; the general recommendation 
to sow the fields with powdered cake, either some weeks before or 
some weeks after putting it in the seed, and when the plants have 
already sprung, appears to be the right one. We have various ob- 
servations made by one of our most experienced practical farmers 
which prove that oil-cake used dry and without mixture often pro- 
duces the most injurious effects upon germination. In September, 
1824, M. Vilmorin, desiring to make a comparative trial of different 
pulverulent manures, strewed a quantity of powdered colewort-cake 
upon a piece of red clover. Upon all the parts of the field which 
had received other manures, applied in the same way, the clover 
sprung perfectly ; but that which had received the oil-cake continu- 
ed absolutely naked ; the cake had been employed in the proportion 
of about 800 cwt. per acre. The same result was also obtained in 
a trial made with vetches and gray winter peas.* Duhamel, refer- 
ring to similar facts, recommends the cake to be applied ten or 
twelve days before sowing. In Flanders, from 6 to 7 cwt. per acre 
is the quantity generall}^ employed for wheat crops, and it is scatter- 
ed over the surface before winter sets in, when the grain is already 
above the ground. 

Tlie pulp of the hccl-root which has been employed in the sugar 
manufactories of France and Flanders, is an article which as food for 
cattle is known not to be inferjf»r to the root before it has undergone 
expression, and it contains nearly tlie same proportions of sugar, al- 
bumen, &c. It is, therefore, always used as food to as great an ex- 
tent as possible. But the article is Icept with diiliculty, and the pro- 
duction at times far exceeds the powers of consumption, so that it 
has to be made into manure, for v\ liich it answers excellently. The 
skimmings and dregs w liich are collected in the process of sugar 
making, are also available as manure. Tliey contain about the same 
amount of azote or azotized matter as farm dtmg, and are therefore 

* Vilmjrin, in Maison Knstlquc, vol. i. p. 201. 



REFUSE OF THE SUGAR-HOUSE, ETC. 277 

of similar value. The animal charcoal of the sugar refinery, after 
it has served its office there, is an admirable manure. It is, in fact. 
bone or ivory-black, mixed with the coagulated blood which has been 
employed to clarify the sirup by entangling impurities, and a very 
small quantity of sugar. This mixture, so rich in azotized princi- 
ples, used actually to be turned into the sewers until the year 1824, 
when M. Payen showed its Value as manure, since which time near- 
ly 10,000 tons have been annually employed in ameliorating the soil, 
to the great advantage of practical agriculture. The importance 
of the trade in this residue of the sugar-house, and complaints of the 
occasional indifferent quality of the article, attracted the attention of 
the department of the Inferior-Loire in 1838, and led to the appoint- 
ment of an inspector of the manure shipped from the port of Nantz. 
I may here observe, that in testing a manure it is by no means 
enough to limit attention to the quantity of organic matter which it 
contains. The only sure means is to determine the amount of azote ; 
it is not organic matter, but the amount of azotized organic matter 
upon which almost alone depends the value of the manure. 

The residue of the sugar refinery is another of those articles 
which presents an occasional anomaly in its application, and which 
must not be left unnoticed. Its effect upon the ground has not only 
been extremely variable, but it has sometimes happened that this 
manure, laid on very soon after coming from the manufactory, has 
been found decidedly injurious to vegetation. Kept for some time, 
for a month or two, in a heap before being applied, its effect has not 
only been found more certain, but also uniformly favorable. 

It is not difficult to explain these divers and opposite influences : 
the sugar contained in the refuse undergoing fermentation yields 
first alcohol, and than acetic and lactic acids. Employed in this 
state, the substance must necessarily prove injurious to vegetation. 
It is only after it has lain for a sufficient length of time exposed to 
the air, to have had the animal matter it contains changed into am- 
monia, and the organic acids engendered saturated with this base, 
that it becomes truly useful to vegetation. The heap indeed then 
shows alkaline, not acid re-action.* 

The residue of the starch manufacturer, the fetid water which is 
obtained in such quantity in the process of making starch from grain, 
is a powerful manure, and ought not to be suffered to run to waste. 

The fulp or residue of the potato which is now produced in con- 
siderable quantity in the potato starch manufactories, is known to 
be an excellent article of food for hogs and cattle. Towards the 
end of the season, however, it is apt to be of very indifferent quality, 
and green food having by this time come in abundantly, it often 
goes to the dung-hill. In the dry state, it is worth its own weight 
of farm dung; wet, 100 of the pulp may be equal to about 131 of 
farm-yard dung. The water which has served for washing out the 
starch from the pulp, as in the case of wheat and other grain, con- 
tains an organic substance which when dried constitutes pulverulent 

* Payen and Boussingault, Ann. de Chiiiiic, v. iii. p. 95, 3e serie 
24 



278 



ANIMAL REMAINS. 



manure that is equal to about half its weight of the dry manure pre- 
pared from ni.trht soil, which the French call poudretle. M. Dailly 
made a comparative trial of these two kinds of manure, and from 
actual experiment found that 200 parts of the deposite from the starch 
manufactory might be used for 100 of poudrette. Even the water 
that is used in the manufacture, and from whicli the substance in 
question is deposited, is an excellent manure when thrown upon the 
ground, a circumstance which is by so muoh the more fortunate that 
this water by standing putrefies and throws olf most offensive ex- 
halations. By using the liquor to his fields, at once, M. Dailly pre- 
vents every kind of annoyance to himself and his neighbors, and 
moreover from his great starch manufactory he realizes in this way 
an additional j)rofit which he estimates at upwards of jC60 per an- 
num. Analysis has shown that 100 of this water from the potato 
starch manufactory represents 17 of moist farm-yard dung. 

In cider countries, \.\\e pulp of Ike apples that have been pressed 
is always thrown upon land as manure, x^t Bechelbronn we reserve 
it for our Jerusalem artichokes ; in Normandy it is thought excel- 
lent tor meadows and young orchards. Analysis of the pulp of ap- 
ples grown in Alsace shows that when dry it contains a quantity of 
azote, which places it on the same footing as farm-yard dung. 
.Sinclair informs us that in Herefordshire the pulp of the cider press 
is made into good manure by being mixed with quick-lime and 
turned two or three times in the course of the following summer. 
Doubtless the addition of lime will hasten the decomposition of the 
woody matter of the pulp ; but it strikes me that this will take place 
rapidly enough of itself in the ground without contriving any means 
of accelerating the process. 

Animal remains. The remains of dead animals and the animal 
matters obtained from the slaughter house are powerful manures, 
which are much sought after in places where their value is properly 
appreciated. Scraps and the refuse of skin, hair, horn, tendons, 
bones, feathers, &c., all form invaluable manure. The flesh of ani- 
mals which die, and so much of that of horses that are slaughtered 
which cannot be used as food for animals, may be dried after having 
been previously boiled, and then reduced to powder and applied as 
manure. The blood of slaughtered animals is less proper as food 
for hogs, although it is often used in this way, than nmscular flesh ; 
it even occasionally gives rise to serious diseases among these ani- 
mals. It is most easily prepared as manure, however, for which it 
answers admirably ; it is enough to coagulate it by exposure to heat, 
and then having broken it down, to dry it in the air or in the stove. 
Liquid blood has been employed as manure, but decomposition then 
takes place so rapidly, tliat the products are exhaled without pro- 
ducing much effect. This objection may be remedied by two means, 
either by diluting the blood in a large quantity of water, with which 
the land is then irrigated, or by mixing it with a considerable mass 
of vegetable earth, which is then applied like ordinary manure. 
There i.s even a pulverulent manure of which blood forms the basis, 
prepared in special establishments in the vicinity of various large 



BONES. 279 

towns. The large quantity of azote contained in these manures 
shows how their value may be such as to permit of their being 
advantageously exported to great distances beyond seas. 

Bones are employed in agriculture after having had the fat which 
they contained extracted from them by boiling. They are crushed 
by being passed between the teeth or grooves of a couple of cast- 
iron rollers. They must be regarded as a manure, the action of 
which is of long duration, because the animal matter contained in 
them decomposes slowly, protected as it is by the earthy casing 
which surrounds it. In England from 50 to 60 bushels of bruised 
bones per acre are usually put upon land prepared for turnips. 

The employment of bones as manure has given rise to the most 
various and contradictory observations. In certain circumstances 
their effect upon vegetation has been almost null ; in others their 
action has been decisive and most favorable. M. Payen has given 
a solution of these anomalies which is perfectly satisfactory. Ac- 
cording to my learned colleague, bones in their interstices, contain 
a quantity, of fat of various consistency, which may be removed by 
long boiling in water ; the average quantity of grease obtained from 
fresh bones is about 10 per cent. It has been observed that this fat- 
ty matter diminishes gradually in bones that dry by long exposure ; 
it even disappears almost entirely when they are dried at a high 
temperature. Tliis happens from the water which is disengaged 
from the bony tissue by the effect of evaporation, being replaced by 
fat melted by the heat. The consequence of this is, that the organic 
tissue of bone, which was already sufficiently rebellious to decom- 
position, becomes still less alterable when it is impregnated with 
grease. The grease, in fact, by reacting upon the carbonate of 
lime of the bone, has formed an earthy soap which long resists at- 
mospherical influences and change under ground. 

It will readily be understood that bones in this condition can have 
little or no action upon vegetation, unless indeed they be reduced to 
ver\' fine powder. This alone will explain how it may happen that 
some bones, after having remained four years in the ground, have 
been found to have lost no more than 8 per cent, of their weight, 
while those, the grease of which has been removed by boiling water, 
have lost in the same space of time from 25 to 30 per cent, of their 
weight.* 

These observations of M. Payen show how completely Schwertz 
was mistaken when he ascribed the indifferent quality of the ma- 
nure prepared from old bones, or from bones that had been boiled, 
to the absence of fat, which he regards, I know not on what 
authority, as a substance extremely favorable to vegetation. It is 
not very obvious how fatty substances should act as manures. I 
myself ascertained, from experiments made some years ago with 
a view to test the conclusions of an agriculturist who ascribed 
the good effects of cake to the fatty matters which it containea, 
that rape-oil had no kind of favorable influence upon the growth 

* Payen, Maison Ruslique, v. i. p. 104. 



280 GRAVES WOOLLEN RAGS, ETC. 

of wheat. I have said nothing here upon the importance of tha 
earthy matter of bones, ])articii];i,rly of the calcareous phosphate 
which they contain, but which is nevertheless acknowledged to be 
of great importance. 

The refuse from the glue-maker'' s, washed and pressed, contains 
all the animal matters which have resisted the action of boiling 
water, such as portions of tendinous and skinny substance, hair, 
pieces of bone, of horn, and of flesh, a calcareous soap, and earthy 
matters. This mixture putrefies rapidly ; but dried, it may be pre- 
served for a great length of time. Analyzed dry, it yields about 4 
per cent, of azote. From 4 to 5 cwt. per acre are employed, but it 
is necessary to manure every year. 

The refuse of the talloiv-?nclter, graves, as it is called, a residue 
consisting in great part of the membranes which have enveloped 
the fat of our domestic animals, mixed with a little blood, some 
flesh, and bony matter, and grease, has hitherto been employed 
almost exclusively as food for dogs. Of late, however, graves have 
been used as manure, and analysis shows that this substance rnnst 
be estimated as equal to about 3^, farm-dung being fixed at 1. 
Used in this proportion, graves produce a marked effect. The 
action of graves, which may be thrown on in fragments and dry, or 
after having been steeped in hot water, and reduced to the state 
of a pulp, will continue for three or four years. 

Shreds oi woollen rags torm a good manure for vines and olive- 
trees especially, though they are also available in husbandry of 
every description. The large proportion of azote, and the sinnll 
quantity of water contained in woollen rags,"constitnte them not only 
one of the richest manures, but also one of those that is most easily 
transported ; 25 cwts. per acre of woollen rags, the cost of which, in 
I'rance, may be about jC3, have been found sufficient as manure for 
three years. The slowness with which wool decomposes, indeed, 
causes its action to be continued during six or eight years. Tweuty- 
flve cwt. of woollen rags may be held equivalent to upwards of 40 
tons of farm-dung, which, at the price of 55. \0d. per ton, would cost 
£\2 165. At the end of three years, M. Delonchainps, an excellent 
practical farmer, gives his land a dressing of farm-dung for three 
years more, when he returns to the wool. Before spreading rags 
they must be cut into pieces, whicii is effected eitiier by a machine, 
or by a piece of scythe-blade fixed in a block of wood. In England, 
the quantity of woollen rags allowed to the acre is generally about 
13 cwt. Sinclair says that they are best suited for dry and sandy or 
chalky soils, and this because they attract moisture. I have not 
found the fact to be so. In the very dry soil of a vineyard manured 
with this article, 1 have found the pieces to decompose with extreme 
slowness, and, up to this time, the effect upon the vines has been 
scarcely perceptible. 

The ras])ings and shavings of horn form a manure of great power, 
that seems applicable to every variety of soil. In England, about 
40 bushels per acre are usually allowed. 

Tendons, trimmings of hides, hair, feathers, cjc, are manures very 



SHELLS MUD. 281 

analogous to tlie last, and of which the value may be estimated from 
the quantity of azote which they severally contain. This value once 
determined, every farmer knows the quantity which he must lay 
upon his land ; and he thus proceeds upon a much more rational 
foundation than when he takes for his guide one or other of those 
vague and arbitrary indications that have been given. Sinclair, for 
example, would have us lay on nine bushels of feather rubbish to the 
acre, and Schwertz recommends from four to five times as much 
more. Nothing, in fact, is more arbitrary and uncertain than to 
estimate such materials by the bulk ; it must be obvious that the 
weight of a bushel of hide-trimmings, of horn-shavings, and of 
feather-ruijbish, must differ very widely, not only with reference to 
one another, but also according to the state of division in which each 
is measured. As a general rule, it is by weight, and weight alone, 
that the quantity of manure must be estimated. 

Shells and mud from the sea-shore and the bottoms of rivers, are 
matters that are not often very highly azotized ; nevertheless they 
may contain an equivalent of the all-important element, azote, which 
may bring them near to wet farm-yard dung in point of value. The 
abundance of such matters in certain situations makes them ex- 
tremely useful. The alkaline and earthy salts, which they generally 
contain in considerable quantity, also add to their fertilizing proper- 
ties. The sea-sand which is employed in Brittany under the name 
oi marl, (merl,) consists, in great part, of the remains of corallines, 
madrepores, and shells, mixed with a few iiundredths of highly 
azotized organic manner. This marine marl is found in great 
abundance at the mouths of the river of Morlaix, where there is a 
considerable traffic carried on in the article. It is said to be repro- 
duced, new banks of it being met with from time to time. It is 
obtained by dredging from barges, and the process is only allowed 
to go on from the 15th of May to the 15th of October, when the 
quays of the town of Morlaix are seen covered with the produce. 
It is carted to a distance of five leagues inland. A barge-load 
weighing seven tons, sells at from 65. Qd. to Ss. This same species 
of marl is now obtained upon the coast of Plancourtrez and in 
the roads of Brest. It has also been discovered near the mouth 
of the river Quimpert. It appears, finally, that the shell sand so 
much employed by the farmers of Devonshire and Cornwall is of 
the same essential nature. 

In the neighborhood of Morlaix, from five to six tons per acre of 
this calcareous sand are employed upon light dry soils ; from eleven 
to twelve tons are given to clayey lands. This quantity would 
probably be too great for porous and damp soils, inasmuch as sea- 
marl belongs to the class oi warm manures ; that is to say, it under- 
goes speedy decomposition. There can be no doubt that sea-marl 
acts further, in virtue of the calcareous matter which it contains, 
and also of its merely mechanical properties upon the strong argilla- 
ceous lands of Brittany, for which sand alone is an excellent im- 
prover. It is also to the carbonate of lime which it contains, that 
its good effects upon lands that show an inflorescence of iron pyrites 

24* 



282 SHELL MARL. 

must be ascribed. It is well to lay this shell-marl upon the land 
shortly after it is taken fiom the sea ; by lontj exposure to the air, 
it suffers disaggregation and loses a portion ot" its good qualities. 

There is another kind ot" sea-sand called trez, wiiich forms banks 
in the neighborhood of Morlaix, and which is known under the name 
of tanque on the northern shores of France, which is favorable to 
vegetation, particularly after it has been washed and freed from tlie 
greater part of the salt which it contains. It is thrown upon the land 
in larger quantity than the marl. The small quantity of animal mat- 
ter which it contains putrefies and is lost when it remains exposed 
to the air for any length of time, so that a distinction has been made 
between fresh or live trez, and old or dead Irez, the one being the 
article as it comes from the sea, the other after it has been exposed 
some time on the shore ; the article which has been exposed un- 
doubtedly contains a smaller quantity of organic matter than that 
which is quite fresh. This variety of sea-sand is particularly avail- 
able upon close and clayey lands, which sometimes receive as many 
as sixteen tons per acre with advantage ; lighter lands, of course, 
require much less. 

Shells, sand, slime, and sea-weed, are not the only useful mate- 
rials supplied to agriculture by the sea ; fish, or their offal, is fre- 
quently employed as manure. The practice of manuring with fish 
is very old, and is universal wherever it can be had recourse to. 
I have already had occasion to say, that at the period of the con- 
quest of America, the Spaniards found it established among the 
Indians, on the shores of the Pacific ocean. The lands are oc- 
casionally manured with fish along the sea-board of Great Britain 
and Ireland, and the low lands of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, 
and Norfolk, also receive occasional supplies of the same power- 
ful manure. The offlil of the herring fishery, of cod, of skate, and 
of the pilchard, in Cornwall, the dog-fish entire, and other kinds, 
that are either less esteemed, or that are caught in quantities greater 
than can be consumed as food, are all admirable manures. We have 
been recommended to mix the fish or fish-offal with quick-lime ; but, 
unless in certain circumstances, the practice is very questionable ; 
the addition is probably only proper where the materials are ex- 
ceedingly oily, as is the case with pilchards, herrings, &c. : an 
earthy soap is then formed which prevents the injurious effects upon 
vegetation which wholly oleaginous matters scarcely fail to produce. 
One analysis of codfish, which I made along with M. Payen, gave 
us a proportion of azote of nearly seven percent. This, of itself, is 
enough to explain wherefore the flesh, the cartilages, and the bones 
of fishes should be found such energetic manures. 

The slime deposited by rivers also yields manure which may be 
employed to much advantage. The Nile, which periodically inun- 
dates the plains of Lower Egypt, owes its fertilizing action to the 
slime which it contains, and wliich it deposites before it again recedes 
into its bed. On the banks of the Durance, the mud or slime depos- 
ited by the river is carefully collected for distribution over the fields 
in its vicinity. The waters of this river are frequently turbid and 



SOOT. 283 

improper for irrigation, until they have deposited the slime which 
they hold in suspension ; the waters are therefore turned into canals 
for the purpose of deposition before they are let upon the land ; and 
such is the quantity of slime that is precipitated, that two or three 
gatherings of it are made in the course of the year. It is dug out 
and thrown upon the banks to dry ; reduced to powder, it is fit to be 
laid upon the land ; and such is its fertilizing power, that a field 
which yielded but four for one, has been brought to yield twelve for 
one by its means.* 

Wood and coal soot, and Picardy ashes. Soot has been known 
for a long period as a useful manure. M. Braconnot, in the soot of 
a chimney where wood had been the fuel, found the following in- 
gredients ; 

Ulmicacid 30.0 

Azotic matter, soluble in water 20.0 

Insoluble carbonated matter 3.9 

Silica 1.0 

Carbonate of lime 14.7 

Carbonate of magnesia (traces of) 

Sulphate of lime 0.5 

Ferruginous phosphate of lime 1.5 

Chloride of potassium 0.4 

Acetate of potash 4.1 

Acetate of lime 5.7 

Acetate of magnesia 0.5 

Acetate of iron (traces of) 

Acetate of ammonia 0.2 

An acrid and bitter element 0.5 

Water 12.5 

100.0 

The analysis which M. Payen and I made of wood and coal soot, 
confirms the presence of the azotized principle detected by M. Bra- 
connot. A considerable trade is carried on in soot for agricultural 
purposes in large towns ; it is thrown upon clovers and young wheats, 
in the proportion of about 20 bushels to the acre. Some have re- 
commended that it should be mixed with lime ; but as soot always 
contains salts having a base of ammonia, the practice is evidently 
objectionable, unless indeed the object be to get rid of that which is 
most useful in the article, which will be effectually accomplished by 
adding lime to it. The proper procedure is to employ the soot 
without admixture during calm or wet weather. In Flanders, the 
colewort beds destined for transplanting are very generally manured 
with soot, which is believed to have the property of preserving the 
young plants from the attacks of insects. In the neighborhood of 
Lisle, they give from 55 to 60 bushels of soot per acre. Schwertz 
appeals to many fiets which go far to satisfy us that the effects of 
soot upon clovers are particularly advantageous ; he says, moreover, 
that coal soot is preferable to wood soot. The superior properties 
of coal soot are evidently due to two causes : first, it is more dense 

* Belleval, in Annals of French Agriculture, 2d series, vol. .\iv. p. 2G1. The beds of 
many of the oozy-bottomed rivers in England near the sea are inexhaustible sources 
of the most valuable manure. The bed of the Thames, between London Bridge and 
Putney Bridge at low water, is a true gold mine if it were but rightly used. — Eng. Ed. 



284 , PICARDY ASHES. 

than wood soot, and in a jriven bulk actually contains a larger quan. 
tity of matter ; secondly, I have found that, for equal weights, coal 
soot contains the larger quantity of azote. 

Picardy ashes are prepared by the slow and imperfect combustion 
of the pyritic turf wliich is dug up in the department of the Aisne 
for the manufacture of sulphate of iron and of alum. This turf piled 
up, heats, and finally takes fire ; the combustion continues for about 
a month, abundance of sulphureous vapors being disengaged. The 
residue is a gray ash, still containing a quantity of carbonaceous 
matter, which is found very advantageous in the way of top-dress- 
ing for meadows. It might be maintained that the utility of such 
ashes depends solely on the sulphate of lime which they contain ; 
but it is ascertained that they are much more active as manure than 
this substance employed by itself; analysis, in fact, explains in some 
degree the fertilizing powers of these ashes, by showing that they 
contain more than \ per cent, of azote, to say nothing of the saline 
matters of which vegetables are so greedy. It is extremely proba- 
ble that during the slow incineration of the turf, there is a quantity 
of sulphate of ammonia produced. 

The ashes which remain after the lixiviation of the pyritic and 
aluminous lignites which are mined for the purpose of making green 
vitriol, are analogous to Picardy ashes, and are employed with equal 
success in agriculture. At Forges-les-Eaux, the pyritic earths after 
.Ixiviation are mixed with a quarter of their weight of turf ashes, 
and form an active manure wliich is employed very extensively in 
the country around the town of Bray in France : it is equally adapt- 
ed to meadows and to land under roots, such as potatoes or turnips, 
green crops or corn. Analysis shows these ashes to have the fol- 
owing composition: 

Soluble organic matter 2.7 

Insoluble huuius 49.8 

Sulphate of proto.xide and of peroxide of iron 1.8 

Fine sand 39.0 

Sulphuret of iron { ~ _ 

Peroxide of iron J 

100.0 
The vitriolic ashes of Forges-les-Eaux are more highly azotized 
than those of Picardy ; they contain 2.72 per cent, of azote. 

The effect of the imperfect combustion of these pyritic turfs, the 
product which results from it, explains to a certain extent the bene- 
ficial effects of the practice of paring aud burning, an important and 
widely spread practice, the utility of wliich it would be difficult to 
understand, were it not connected in some way with the production 
of ammoniacal ashes. 

The useful effects of paring and burning, are, in all probability, 
connected with the destruction of organic matter, very jioor in azo- 
tized principles ; in the transformation of the surface of the soil into 
a porous, carbonaceous earth, made apt to condense and retain the 
ammoniacal vapors disengaged during the combustion ; lastly, by 
the production of alkaline and earthy salts, which are familiarly 
known to exert a most beneficial influence upon vegetation. These 



MANURES. 285 

conditions seem so entirely those, the object of which it is to realize 
by paring and burning, that in order to make the operation favorable 
to the soil which undergoes it, the vegetable matter which it has 
produced, must of necessity be transformed into black ashes ; when 
it goes beyond this, as Mr. Hoblyn has well observed, when the in- 
cineration is complete, and the residue presents itself as a red ash, 
the soil may be struck with perfect barrenness for the future. The 
burning, therefore, that was not properly managed, that led to the 
complete incineration of all the organic matter, would, for the same 
reason, have a very bad effect in the preparation of the Picardy ash- 
es ; which might indeed act in the same way as turf ashes from the 
hearth and oven, but which, deprived of all azotized principles, would 
not ameliorate the ground in the manner of organic manures. 

I have frequently seen the process of burning pertormed in the 
steppes of southern America. Fire is set to the pastures after the 
grass which covers them has become dry and woody ; the flame 
spreads with inconceivable rapidity, and to immense distances. The 
earth becomes charred and black ; the combustion of those parts 
that are nearest to the surface, however, is never complete ; and a 
few days after the passage of the flame, a fresh and vigorous vege- 
tation is seen sprouting through the blackened soil, so that in a few 
weeks the scene of the desolation by fire, becomes changed into a 
rich and verdant meadow. 

ANIMAL EXCREMENTS. 

Horse-dung. The composition of horse-dung would lead us to 
infer that its action must be more energetic than that of cow-dung. 
Nevertheless, agriculturists frequently consider it as of inferior qual- 
ity. This opinion is, even to a certain extent, well founded. Thus 
although it be acknowledged that horse-dung covered in before it has 
fermented, yields a very powerful manure, it is known that in general 
the same substance, after its decomposition, affords a manure that is 
really less useful than that of the cow-house. This comes entirely 
from the fact that the droppings of the stable, by reason of the small 
quantity of moisture they contain, present greater difficulties in the 
way of proper treatment than those from the cow-house. Mixed 
with litter and thrown loosely upon the dung-hill, horse-dung heats 
rapidly, dries, and perishes : unless the mass be supplied with a suf- 
ficient quantity of water to keep down the fermentation, and the 
access of the air be prevented by proper treading, there is always, 
without the least doubt, a considerable loss of principles, which it is 
of the highest importance to preserve. I can give a striking instance 
of this fact in the changes that happen in the conversion of horse- 
dung into manure in the last stage of decomposition : fresh horse- 
dung in the dry state contains 2.7 per cent, of azote. The same 
dung laid in a thick stratum and left to undergo entire decomposition, 
gave a humus or mould, from which, reduced to dryness, no more 
than one per cent, of azote was obtained. I add, that by this fermen- 
tation or decomposition, the dung had lost nine tenths of its weight. 



286 HORSE-DUNG. 

From these numbers every one may judge how great had been the 
loss of azotized principles. In practice, however, little care is be- 
stowed on the preparation of horse-dung ; the lermentation is rarely, 
if ever, pushed to this extreme point indeed ; but it is not the less 
true that it is constantly approached in a greater or less degree ; and 
that the consequences, although not altogether so unfavorable as 
those which I have particularly signalized, are nevertheless extremely 
destructive. All enlightened agriculturists have, therefore, long 
been aware of the attention necessary to the management of horse- 
dung, which requires a degree of care, that may be perfectly well 
dispensed with when the business is to convert the dejections of horn- 
ed cattle into manure. To obtain the best results in the management 
of horse-dung, it appears to be absolutely necessary to give it a 
much larger quantity of moisture than it can ever receive from the 
urine of the animal ; if it be not watered it necessarily heats, dries, 
and loses both in weight and quality ; while, by being kept properly 
moist, it produces a manure, which half rotted, is of quality superior, 
or at all events equal, to the same weight of cow-dung. 

M. -Schattenmann, who has the produce of stables containing two 
hundred horses to manage, follows a process of the most commend- 
able description in the preparation of his manure, and which is 
attended with the very best results. His dunghill stance, of no great 
depth, is about 440 yards square in superficies, and divided into two 
equal portions. The bottom of this stance is so arranged as to pre- 
sent two inclined planes, which bring all the liquids that drain from 
it to the middle, where there is an ample tank for tlieir reception, 
furnished with a pump for their redistribution to tiie dunghill. There 
is also another spring-water pump destined to supply the water that 
is necessary to preserve the dung-heap in an adequate state of moist- 
ness. The latter auxiliary is quite indispensable ; the quantity of 
water necessary is so considerable when masses of such magnitude 
are to be treated, that we cannot trust to any casual source of supply. 
The two portions of the area are alternalcdy piled with the dung as 
it comes from the stables ; it is heaped to the height of 10, \2, or 
14 feet ; it is trodden down carefully, as it is evenly spread, and 
plentifully watered from the spring-water pump. Due consolidation, 
and a state of constant humidity, are the two conditions that are the 
most indispensable to the successful preparation of horse-dung. M. 
Schattenmann is in the habit of adding to the liquid, saturated with 
the soluble matters of the dunghill, a quantit}'^ of sulphate of iron in 
solution, or of sulphate of lime (gypsum) in powder ; he also throws 
the same salts upon the surfiice of his heaj) : the object of this is 
evidently to transform into sulphate, the volatile carbonate of ammo- 
nia formed in the course of the decomposition, and so to prevent its 
escape and loss. By these means a pasty manure, as rich as that 
which is yielded by horned cattle, and of a quality, the excellence 
of which is proclaimed by the remarkable crops that cover the lands 
which receive it, is produced in the course of two or three months.* 

* Schattenmann, Annalcs de Chiinie, 3c seric, vol. iv. p. 117. 



HORSE-DUNG. 287 

It is almost useless to add, that great care must be taken not to in- 
troduce too large a quantity of sulphate of iron, which might have 
a prejudicial influence upon vegetation, into the dunghill or the 
drainings from it. In making use of sulphate of lime there is noth- 
ing to fear on this score ; this salt in excess would be rather favor- 
able than hurtful ; in general, gypsum is certainly the preferable 
substance, both on account of its never doing mischief, and of its 
greatly inferior price.* 

Farmers generally advise horse-dung to be reserved for argilla- 
ceous, deep, and moist soils ; this recommendation is given in con- 
nection with the manure that is obtained by the usual imperfect pro- 
cess of preparation. With regard to the horse-dung, prepared in the 
manner which I have just described, and as practised by M. Schat- 
tenmann, it is adapted to soils of all kinds ; and if it differs from 
the dung of the cow-house, it is only by its superior quality. This 
last fact is at once explained by the elementary analysis of the ex- 
crement^ of a horse fed upon hay and oats. 

100 parts of the urine of the animal so fed, yielded 12.4 of dry 
extract, the composition of which was as follows : 

In the state of extract. In the liquid state. 

Carbon 36.0 4.46 

Hydrogen 3.8 0.47 

Oxygen 11.3 1.40 

Azote 12.5 1.55 

Salts 36.4 4.51 

Water • " 87.61 

100.0 100.00 

The droppings of the same horse after drying, gave 24.7 of fixed 
matter, the analysis of which indicated : 

Dry excrement. Moist excrement. 

Carbon 38.7 9.56 

Hydrogen 5.1 1.26 

Cxygen 37.7 9.31 

Azote 2.2 0.54 

Salts 16.3 4.02 

Water ■ ■ . ■ " 75.31 

100.0 100.00 

The dung of horned cattle is often extremely watery ; it is espe- 
cially so when furnished by animals kept upon green food ; this ex- 
treme humidity renders its preparation easy. Its equivalent number 
is higher than that of horse-dung ; it is, in fact, less highly azotized, 
and consequently less active. If the food have a great effect upon 
the quality of the manure, it is quite certain that the circumstances 
or states of the cattle have an effect which is scarcely less remark- 
able. Milch cows and cows in calf always furnish a manure that is 
less highly azotized than stall-fed and laboring oxen ; and this is 
readily understood : the azotized principles of the food are diverted 
to secretions, which concur in the development of a new being in 
throne case, in the production of milk in the other ; for the same 

* Every farmer who should have something like a cart or wagon-load of gypsum 
brought to the farm every year would find his profit from the practice. — Eng. Ed. 



288 hog's dung — pigeon's dung. 

reason the dejections of younfr animals, all things else being equal, 
furnish a manure of less power and value than those of adult ani- 
mals. I shall have occasion to recur to this important subject, 
which has never yet been sufficiently studied. 

The urine and excrements of a milch cow, which is giving about 
12 pints of milk per diem, have shown upon analysis, the followin"- 
quantities of elements : 100 of the urine contained 11.7 of dry ex- 
tract, and had this composition : 

Urine dry. Urine liquid. 

Carbon 27.2 3.18 

Hydrogen 2.6 0.30 

0.\ygen 2().4 3.09 

Azote 3.8 0.44 

Salts 40.0 4.G8 

Water 0.0 88.31 

100.0 100.00 

100 of fresh excrement left on drying 9.4 of dry substance, and in 
each state contained : 

Excrement dry, Excremenl moist. 

Carbon 42.8 4.02 

Hydrogen .'5.2 0.49 

Oxygen 37.7 3.54 

Azote 2.3 0.22 

Salts 12.0 1.13 

Water 0.0 90.60 

100.0 100.00 

Hog^s dung. From all I have seen, I conclude that hogs well 
kept and put up to fatten, yield dejections which are highly azotized, 
and which must consequently furnish a manure of excellent quality. 
Schwertz has, indeed, ascertained that this manure acts more pow- 
erfully than cow-dung. 

S/tcep-dung is one of the most active of manures, a fact which is 
confirmed by analysis ; for it is by no means watery, and in the 
usual state contains upwards of one per cent, of azote. The mode 
of managing sheep generally implies that they manure the ground 
immediately. Schwertz calculates that in the course of a night, a 
sheep will manure something more tlian a square yard of surface ; 
at Bechelbronn we have found the quantity manured to be about 4 
square feet. The following are the details of one experiment : 

Two hundred sheep were folded for a fortnight upon a rye-stubble, 
of an extent which gave as nearly as possible four square feet of 
surface per sheep. The manuring thus effected was found to pro- 
duce a maximum effect upon the crop of turnips which followed the 
rye. 

Pigeoiis dung is known as a /lol manure, and of such activity 
that it must be used with discretion. Pigeon's dung is available for 
crops of every descrii)tion ; Schwertz has made use of it for a long 
time, and always with the greatest success, mixed with coal ashes, 
upon clovers. The Flemish fixrmers procure pigeon's dung from 
the department of the Pas de Calais, where there are a great num- 
ber of dove-cotes, one of which, containing from six hundred to six 
hundred and fifty pigeons, will let for the sum of about £4 per annum. 



GUANO. 289 

merely for the sake of the dung ; the quantity yielded in this time 
may be about a wagon-load. In the neighborhood of Lisle, this 
manure is applied particularly in the cultivation of flax and tobacco. 
According to M. Cordier, the dung of between seven hundred and 
eight hundred pigeons is sufficient to manure nearly 2^ acres of 
ground. The dung of three hundred and twelve pigeons, therefore, 
would suffice for an acre. The value of pigeon's dung may be es- 
timated from the large proportion of azote which it contains ; that 
which I analyzed from Bechelbronn gave 8j per cent, of this prin- 
ciple, a result which ought not to excite surprise when it is known 
that the white matter that appears in the excrements of birds, con- 
sists of nearly pure uric acid. The manure of the hen-house is 
nearly or quite as good as pigeon's dung. 

Guano is a manure of the same nature as pigeon's dung, and the 
use of wliich, long familiar on the coasts of Peru, has lately extend- 
ed to these countries, the article being now imported in large quan- 
tities, both from the South American and African coasts. Guano 
appears to be the result of the accumulation for ages of the excre- 
ments of the sea-fowl, which live and nestle in the islets, in the 
neighborhood of the great southern continents of the new and old 
world. The mass in many places forms beds of between 60 and 70 
feet in thickness. The principal places whence guano is obtained, 
are the Chinche islands near Pisco ; but other deposites of the sub- 
stance are known to exist more to the south, — in the islets of Iza 
and Ilo, at Arica, and in the neighborhood of Payta, as I had an op- 
portunity of ascertaining during my stay in that port. The inhab- 
itants of Chinche are the principal traders in guano ; and a class of 
small vessels, called Guaneros, are constantly engaged in carrying 
the manure.* 

Fourcroy and Vauquelin were the first who fixed attention on the 
nature of guano. The specimen which they examined was brought 
to Europe by M. de Humboldt, and contained : Uric acid (0.25,) ox- 
alate of ammonia, chlorhydrate of ammonia, oxalate of potash, 
phosphates of potash and of lime, chloride of potassium, fatty matter, 
and sand. 

Since this time Dr. Fownes has again analyzed guano. The 
sample upon which he operated was of a light brown color and ex- 
tremely oliensive smell ; it yielded : 

Oxalate of ammonia 1 

Uric acid \ 66.2 

Traces of carbonate of ammonia and organic matter ) 

Phosphates of lime and of magnesia 29.2 

Phosphates and alkaline chlorides, and traces of sulphates 4.6 

100.0 

Another sample, deeper in color and without smell, contained : 
Pure oxalate of ammonia, 44.6 ; earthy phosphates, 41.2 ; alkaline 
Dhosphates, sulphates, and chlorides, 14.2=100. 

The composition of guano would confirm, were there any occasion 

* Humboldt. Annales de Chimie, vol. Ivi. p. 258. 
25 



290 NIGHT-SOIL. 

for confirmation, the opinion that has been formed as to its origin. 
The islets which supply it are still tenanted, especially during the 
night, by a multitude of sea-fowl. Nevertheless, from the calcula- 
tions of M. de Humboldt, the excrements of these birds in the course 
of three centuries, would not form a layer of guano of more than 
one third of an inch in thickness ; — imagination stops short, startled, 
in presence of the vast lapse of time which must have been neces- 
sary to accumulate such beds of the substance as now exist, or 
rather, as lately existed in many places ; for it is rapidly disappear- 
ing since it has become a subject of the commercial enterprise of 
mankind.* 

The average composition of guano must by no means be inferred 
from the preceding analyses of picked samples : earthy matters are 
usually present in much larger proportion than they are here stated. 
The guano generally imported into England and France yields a 
proportion of azote very far short of that which the 25 per cent, of 
uric acid which has sometimes been stated to exist in this substance 
would yield. In three trials the azote found was 0.14, 0.05, and 
0.05 ; the mean would therefore be 0.08, which represents the quan- 
tity of azote in pigeon's dung. 

The litter and excrement of the silkworm is used as manure ia 
the south. Analysis indicates 3 per cent, of azote in its constitution. 

Human excrements are regarded as one of the most active ma- 
nures that can be employed. In countries where agriculture has 
made real progress, this article is highly prized, and no pains are 
spared to obtain so powerful a manure. In Flanders, feculent mat- 
ters form the staple of an active traffic ; and in the neighborhood of 
large towns, they form an invaluable material for the amelioration 
of the soil. The Chinese collect human excrements with the great- 
est solicitude, vessels being placed for the purpose at regular dis- 
tances along the most frequented ways. Old men, women and chil- 
dren, are engaged in mixing them with water, which is applied in 
the neighborhood of the plants in cultivation. f The fresh excrement 
is occasionally worked up with clay, and formed into bricks, which 
are pulverized when dry, and the powder is applied as a top-dress- 
ing. One of the advantages resulting from the almost exclusive 
use of this manure in China is this, that the fields seem to grow 
nothing but the plant which is the object of solicitude with the 
farmer ; it is there extremely difficult to meet with a weed. The 
quality of feculent matter as a manure depends much on the nature 
and abundance of the food consumed by those who furnish it. M. 
d'Arcct relates a curious anecdote in coimection with this fact : a 
farmer had purchased the produce of the cabinet of one of the most 

* Dr. John Davy, all whose scientifir. researches equal in accuracy the hrilKant in 
vcstigations of hi« illustrious brother, has lately turned his attention to this subject: 
he finds that we have collections of guano in Great Brititin that are really not to be 
despised in some cases. The surface of the ground under old-established rookeries is 
a true guano bed ; and removed and used as manure in the open field, produces most 
excellent effects. Seo Dr. Davy's paper in Ed. Lond. and Dub. Philos. Mag. Oct. 1, 
1844.— Eno. Ed. 

^ Jullen, Annales de Chimio, vol. iii. p. G5, 3d series. 



NIGHT-SOIL. 291 

celebrated restaurateurs or taverns of the Palais Royal ; encouraged 
by the success he obtained in employing this manure, and desirous 
of obtaining a larger supply of the article, he rented the produce of 
several of the barracks of Paris. The manure which he now obtain- 
ed, however, he found to produce an effect greatly less than he had 
anticipated, so that he lost money by his bargain. Berzelius found 
the following substances in human excrements : 

Remains of food 7.0 

Bile 0.9 

Albumen 0.9 

A peculiar extractive matter 2.7 

Indeterminate animal matter, viscous matter, 

resin, and an insoluble residuum 14.0 

Salts 1.2 

Water 73.3 

100.0 

The salts had the composition following : 

Carbonate of soda 29.4 

Chloride of sodium 23.5 

Sulphate of soda 11.8 

Ammoniaco-magnesian phosphate 11.8 

Phosphate of lime 23.5 

100.0 

Human urine is one of the most powerful of all manures. Left 
to itself it speedily undergoes putrefaction, and devolves an abun- 
dance of ammoniacal salts, as all the world knows. Its composition, 
according to Berzelius, is the following : 

Urea 3.01 

Uric acid 0.10 

Indeterminate animal matter j i 7\ 

Lactic acid, and lactate of ammonia ) 

Mucus of the bladder 0.03 

Sulphate of potash 0.37 

Sulphate of soda 0.32 

Phosphate of soda ■ 0. 29 

Chloride of sodium 0.45 

Phosphate of ammonia 0.17 

Chlorhydrate of ammonia 0.15 

Phosphate of lime and of magnesia 0.10 

Silica traces 

Water 93.30 

100.00 

The phosphates of lime and magnesia which it contains are ex- 
tremely insoluble salts, and have been supposed to be held in solution 
by phosphoric acid, lactic acid, and very recently by Professor 
Liebig, by hippuric acid, which he now states to be a regular con- 
stituent of healthy human urine. 

From the interesting inquiries upon urine made by M. Lecanu, it 
appears that a man passes nearly half an ounce of azote with his 
urine in the course of twenty-four hours. A quantity of urine taken 
from a public urine pail of Paris, yielded 7 per 1000 of azote. The 
dry extract of the same urine yielded nearly 17 per cent. 

Human soil as commonly obtained consists of a mixture of fecu- 
lent matters and urine. It may be applied immediately to the ground 



292 FLEMISH MANURE. 

as it comes from the privy. In some parts of Tuscany it is mixed 
witli three times its bulk of water, and so applied to the surface. I 
have myself seen nig^ht-soil as it was obtained, and without prepara- 
tion, spread upon a field of wheat without any ill effect : so that the 
Tuscan preparation may be regarded as a simple means of spread- 
ing a limited quantity of manure over a given extent of ground. 

It is in French Flanders, however, that human soil is collected 
with especial care ; it ought to be so collected everywhere. The 
reservoir for its preservation ought to be one of the essential articles 
in every farming establishment, as it is in Flanders, where there is 
always a cistern or cess-pool in masonry, with an arch turned over 
it for the purpose of collecting this invaluable manure. The bottom 
is cemented and paved. Two openings are left : one in the middle 
of the turned arch for the introduction of the material ; the other, 
smaller and made on the north side, is for the admission of the air, 
which is requisite for the fermentation. 

The Flemish reservoir may be of the dimensions of about 35 
cubical yards. Whenever the necessary operations of the farm will 
permit, the carts are sent off to the neighboring town to purchase 
night-soil, which is then discharged into the reservoir, where it usual- 
ly remains for several months before being carried out upon the land. 

This favorite Flemish manure is applied in the liquid state (mixed 
in water) before or after the seed is in the ground, or to transplanted 
crops after they have been dibbled in. Its action is prompt and 
energetic. The sowing completed, and the land dressed up with all 
the pains which the Flemish farmer appears to take a pleasure in 
bestowing ujion it, a charge of the manure is carried out at night in 
tubs or barrels. At the side or corner of the field there is a vat that 
will hold from 50 to 60 gallons, into which the load is discharged, 
and from which a workman, armed with a scoop at the end of a 
handle a dozen feet in length or more, proceeds to lade it out all 
around him. The vat emptied in one place is removed further on, 
and the same process is repeated until the whole field is watered.* 

The purchase, the carriage, and the application of this Flemish 
manure cannot be otherwise than costly ; we therefore see it given 
particularly to crops which, when luxuriant and successful, are of the 
highest market value — such as flax, rape, and tobacco. 

This manure, the sample of it, at least, which M. Payen and I 
examined, is of a yellowish green color, and with reference to smell 
cannot be compared to any thing better than a weak solution of 
hydrosulphate of ammonia. This salt is undoubtedly present ; but 
exposure to the air converts it rapidly into the sulphate of the same 
base. According to M. Kulilmann, the quality of the liquid Flemish 
manure is to be judged of by its smell, its viscidity, and its saline and 
sharp taste. By the fermentation which takes place in the cess- 
pools, which are never emptied completely, the feculent matter, kept 
for some time there, does in fact acquire a slight viscidity. When 
solid excrementitious matter predominates in the fermented mass 

* Cordier, Africullnrc of French Flanders, p. 240. 



FLEMISH MANURE. 293 

its effect upon vegetation is of longer continuance ; but when it is 
derived entirely from urine, it acts almost immediately after its 
application. In either case, the effect of Flemish manure does not 
extend beyond the season ; like all the other organic substances which 
have undergone complete putrid fermentation, it is a true annual 
manure. 

Occasionally, a quantity of powdered oil-cake is thrown into the 
reservoir. This is either when the manure is supposed to be too 
dilute, or when there is little night-soil at command. The following, 
according to Professor Kuhlmann, is an example of the employment 
of the Flemish manure in a rotation which is common in the neigh- 
borhood of Lisle, and in the course of which the crops are colza or 
eolewort, wheat and oats. 

First year. In October or November, the land is manured with 
farm-dung, which is ploughed in, in the usual way. At this time 
a dose of the liquid manure, amounting to about 5000 gallons per 
acre, is applied : a second ploughing is given, and the eolewort is 
planted. 

Second year. The colza is gathered, the ground is ploughed for 
autumn sowing; from 1000 to 1300 gallons or so of liquid manure 
are distributed, and the wheat is sown. 

Third year. The wheat stubble is ploughed down at the end of 
the autumn, and about 1000 or 1100 gallons of the liquid manure 
per acre are distributed ; the oats are sown in the spring. If cir- 
cumstances should prevent the application of the liquid manure in 
autumn, it is laid on in March, and then it has been found that one-fifth 
less will suffice ; but its application at this season is avoided as much 
as possible on account of the havoc that is made by the passage of 
horses, carts, and men over the surface of the soft ploughed land. It 
is with a view to avoid this disturbance of the surface that in many 
places oil-cake in powder is applied to the fields under colza 
when the manuring has to be performed after the crop is in the 
ground. 

For beet, the dose of Flemish manure is carried the length of from 
1300 to 1400 gallons per acre ; but when the root is intended for the 
manufacture of sucrar, liquid manure is sedulously avoided, experience 
having shown that it has the very worst effect upon the production 
of sugar, a circumstance which is very easily explained upon grounds 
that have already been given. 

The price of Flemish manure at Lisle is 2W. for a measure con- 
taining 22 gallons. In Flanders, it is held that this quantity, which 
will weigh hard upon 2 cwt., is equal to about 5 cwt. of farm-yard 
dung. The liquid manure which I analyzed yielded 2 per 1000 of 
azote. Farm-yard dung, in its usual state, contains as much as 4 
per 1000 ; it follows, therefore, that the real equivalent number of 
Flemish manure is 182, that of farm dung being 100 ; in other words, 
it would require 182 of Flemish manure to replace 100 of farm-yard 
manure ; a conclusion that differs widely from that which is usually 
acted upon. But it must be observed that from its nature, the Flem- 
ish manure produces its maximum infiuence in the course of the 



294 POUDRETTE. 

season in which it is applied. It. seems to have no effect on the 
crop of the succeedinjr year. Farm-yard dung, on the contrary, 
only exerts a portion of the whole amount of its beneficial influence 
in the course of the year in which it is laid on ; it has still something, 
often much, in reserve for succeeding- years. To compare liquid 
manure with farm-yard dung, with reference to an annual crop, is to 
compare this manure to the unknown fraction of the farm-yard dung 
which comes into play in the course of the first year, and from such 
a contrast no possible inference can be drawn in regard to the rela- 
tive value of the two kinds of dung. 1 have insisted upon this cir- 
cumstance, because it is often involved in the estimates that are 
made of the relative values of the different species of manure ; and 
because, from losing sight of it, unfavorable conclusions are frequently • 
come to in regard to manures that undergo decomposition very slow- 
ly ; these manures, nevertheless, acting for a great length of time, 
produce both a greater amount and a more durable kind of ameliora- 
tion of the soil. Rapidity of action, in a manure, is undoubtedly a 
quality that is highly valuable in many cases ; and Flemish manure 
possesses this quality in the highest degree. Nevertheless, it is also 
an advantage to possess a manure which elaborates gradually, and 
according to the exigencies of vegetables, those principles that 
contribute to their growth, and which suspend in a great measure 
this elaboration in the course of the winter — which remain during 
the cold and rainy season in an almost inert condition, when any 
fecundating matter produced would merely be washed away and lost. 
These advantages, to which must be added that of breaking up and 
lightening the soil, are all possessed by good farm-yard manure. 
They are such, in fact, that this manure, even in Flanders, is still 
indispensable ; the liquid manures of that country are nothing more 
than annual auxiliaries. 

The method followed in Flanders of using night-soil is certainly 
highly rational ; it is the same as that which is adopted in Alsace, in 
the neighborhood of towns, with this difference, that our farmers 
collect no store of the material ; they go in quest of it at the moment 
it is wanted. It is applied as in Flanders, or it is incorporated with 
absorbent substances, such as straw, or with other more consistent 
manures. The night-soil of Paris, which in the course of a year 
amounts to an immense quantity, is treated in a totally different 
manner, which appears to be in opposition to the simplest notions of 
science, of economy, and of all that is conducive to health. 1 allude 
to the mode of preparing poudrcttc. 

In the neighborhood of Paris there are places appropriated to the 
reception of the night-soil : it is thrown into reservoirs of no great 
depth, in comparison with their superficial extent, and of an aggre- 
gate capacity which is such that tiiey will contain the whole of the 
products collected by the night-man in the course of six months. 
These reservoirs are arranged in stages, one above another. Into 
the upper one are discharged the matters collected in the cimrse of 
the night. The upper reservoir full, a sluice is opened by being 
pushed partially down, whicli allows the more liipiid matters to es- 



POUDRETTE. 295 

cape into the second resertoir placed under it. Repeated drainings 
are effected in this way, and when the second basin is also full, there 
is a deposition of solid matter as in the first ; the more liquid par- 
ticles are then let off from the second into the third reservoir, and so 
on in succession until the last and lowest is attained, from which the 
liquid used to be turned into a watercourse ; but, of late, these con- 
taminated liquids have been got rid of by means of what may be 
called absorbing artesian shafts — deep holes pierced in a dry and 
porous soil. 

When the deposite in the first reservoir is held to be sufficiently 
consistent, it is drained by lowering the sluice more and more ; no 
fresh matter is added, the new charges being deposited in another 
system of reservoirs. The deposite once drained is in the pasty 
condition ; it is then taken out with the spade, and spread upon an 
earthen floor which slopes off on either side, and the mass is turned 
from time to time to favor the drying ; this process, in fact, is con- 
tinued until the material has become pulverulent. It is then stored 
under sheds, or thrown up into pyramidal heaps, the sides of which 
are well beaten in order to enable them to throw off the wet. 

Poudrette is of a brown color, and weighs nearly 150 lbs. per 
sack. Put into a retort, and distilled with a heat of from 424° to 
930" Fahr., it yields 52.6 of ammoniacal fluid, and 47.3 of dry mat- 
ter, in which we encounter fixed ammoniacal salts, such as the sul- 
phates, phosphates, hydrochlorates, &c. M. Jacquemart finds that 
in 100 parts of poudrette there is 1.26 of ammonia, the greater part 
in the state of carbonate ; but it contains a quantity of animal matter 
besides, which, by dry distillation, yields a nearly equal amount of 
the same substance ; whence it follows that poudrette contains 
nearly 2| per cent, of volatile alkali, or 2 of azote. By direct analy- 
sis, I obtained 1.6 of azote. 

Poudrette is spread upon the land at the time of ploughing, from 
26 to 34 bushels per acre being allowed. On meadow lands it pro- 
duces very good effects in the dose of about 25 bushels per acre. 
The disgusting smell of night-soil is, to a certain extent, an obstacle 
to its general use. This obstacle, however, is only felt in places 
where agricultural industry, and the manufactures connected with it, 
are still in a backward state. One remarkable circumstance is, that 
the disgust which naturally arises from the manipulation of such ar- 
ticles, has been more especially got over in countries that are justly 
celebrated for their extreme attention to cleanliness and the easy 
position of their inhabitants. I quote Flanders and Alsace in proof 
of the fact. It has been said, moreover, that certain articles pro- 
duced in soils manured with human excrement contract a smell and 
taste which give rather unpleasant information of the nature of the 
manure that has been employed to favor their growth. In the lim- 
ited circle of my own experience on this subject, I can say that I 
have observed nothing which favors such a statement. However 
this may be, Mr. Salmon has succeeded in disinfecting night-soil 
completely, by mixing it with a kind of animal charcoal obtained by 
calcining in close vessels a porous earth impregnated with organic 



496 COMPOSTS. 

substances. This is the article which is sold under the name of 
animalized black. Its quality as a manure must depend especially, 
I might even say entirely, on the quantity of azotized organic matter 
which enters into its composition. 

Co)7iposfs. A great deal has been written, and much has been 
said on the advantages of composts, or mixtures, contrived with a 
view to the amelioration of the soil. The receipts for these com- 
posts are very numerous; they prove that the discovery of a compost 
is an easy matter, and requires but a small amount of ingenuity. To 
unite different matters in such a way as to obtain a compound that 
shall act advantageously, it is only necessary to make it up of sub- 
stances which of themselves and isolatedl}"^ are good manures. But 
that it is possible to supply the scarcity of manure, to create it in 
some sort by means of composts, is a subject of dispute. In fact, 
when we look attentively at the numerous mixtures which have been 
indicated as leading to this end, we always perceive that the propo- 
sal amounts to an extension or dilution of some powerful manure 
with a substance that is either inert or has little activity. This mode 
of proceeding may have its advantages ; it enables us to make a 
more equal distribution of the manure we have at our disposal, but 
it actually supplies us with none. 

Earthy substances almost always figure in composts. Turf-ashes, 
wood-ashes, marl, and particularly lime, are constant ingredients. 
Marl may suit certain soils ; lime is a substance of great activity, 
and which for this reason must be admitted into composts \\ith cau- 
tion ; it may act in the disintegration of woody parts — of stalks, and 
stems, and leaves ; but we must be very careful not to follow the 
recommendation of Schwertz, who would have us throw quick-lime 
into our privies with the view to bringing the matters there contained 
into a consistent and readily pulverizable state. By doing so we 
should infallibly lose the greater part of the principles that are truly 
useful in the soil. Much mischief and great destruction of manure, 
indeed, have been the consequence of the insensate and indiscrimi- 
nate use of quick-lime under all circumstances ; the business is 
much rather to preserve than to destroy the substances that are used 
as manures ; the purpose is to fix, not to dissipate the volatile elements 
which they contain. One great objection to the extensive employ- 
ment of composts is the amount of labor they require in the repeated 
turnings which arc held necessary in their preparation, and in the 
largo quantity of matter which has to be transported. 

The following table will be found useful as giving a comprehen- 
sive view of the proportion of azote contained in the various kinds 
of manures which have been particularly examined, and of their 
equivalents, referred to farm-yard dung as the standard. 



MANURES. 



297 



TABLE OF THE COMPARATIVE VALUE OF MANURES 

DEDUCED FROM ANALYSES MADE BY MESSRS. PAYEN AND BOUSSINGAULT. 





8 


A 


Quality ac- 


Equivalent 








100 o^t°i 


nauer. 


cordii 
sla 


g to 
e. 


according to 
slale. 






Kind of Dung. 


1 














Remarko. 


Dry. 


Wei. 


Dry. 


Wei. 


Dry. 


Wei. 


Farmyard dung . . 


79.3 


1.95 


0.41 


100 


100 


100 


100 


Aver, of Bechelbronn. 


Dung trum un iini yard 


60.6 


2.08 


0.79 


107 


107 


94 


51 


From south of France. 


Dung water. . . . 


99.6 


1.54 


0.06 


78 


2 


127 


68 


Washed by the rain. 


Wheat straw . . . 


19.3 


0.30 


0.24 


15 


60 


650 


167 


Fresh, of Alsace, 1838. 


Idem 


5.3 


0.53 


0.49 


27 


122.5 


36; 


82 


Old from environs of 
Paris. 


Idem 


5.3 


0.43 


0.41 


22 


102.5 


453 


98 


Ditto stubble. 


Idem 


9.4 


1.42 


1.33 


73 


332.5 


137 


30 


Ditto upper part, ear 
included. 


Rye straw .... 


12.2 


0.20 


0.17 


10 


42.5 


975 


235 


Of Alsace. 


Idem 


12.6 


0.60 


0.42 


26 


105 


390 


95 


Environs of Paris, 1811. 


Oat straw .... 


21.0 


0.36 


0.28 


18 


70 


542 


143 


•1 


Barley straw . . . 


11.0 


0.26 


0.23 


13 


57.5 


750 


174 




Wheat cliati" . . . 


7.6 


0.94 


0.85 


48 


212.5 


207 


47 


'f Of Alsace. 


Pea stra w .... 


8.5 


1.95 


1.79 


100 


447.5 


100 


22 


1 


Millet straw . . . 


19.0 


0.96 


0.78 


49 


195 


203 


51 


J 


Buckwheat straw . 


11.6 


0.54 


0.48 


27 


120 


361 


83 




Lentil straw . . .' 


9.2 


1.12 


1.01 


57 


250 


174 


40 




Dried potato tops 


12.9 


0.43 


0.37 


22 


92.5 


4.53 


108 




Withered madia stalks 


14.3 


0.66 


0.57 


33 


142.5 


295 


70 


After seeding. 


Idem turned under 


















while green . . 


70.6 


1.53 


0.45 


79 


113 


126 


89 


Before seeding. 


Dried hrooni . . . 


10.4 


1.37 


1.22 


70 


305 


142 


33 


Stalk and leaves. 


Withered leaves of 


















beetroot .... 


88.9 


4.50 


0.50 


230 


125 


43 


80 


Of mangel wurzel. 


Ditto of potatoes . . 


76.0 


2.30 


0.55 


117 


137.5 


85 


73 


Wither'd top Ac. leaves. 


Ditto of carrots . . 


70.9 


2.94 


0.85 


150 


212.5 


66 


47 




Leaves of heather 


7.0 


1.90 


1.74 


97 


425 


103 


23 


Dried in the air. 


J )itto of pear-trees . 


14.5 


1.69 


1.36 


81.5 


340 


127 


29 




Ditto of oak . . . 


25.0 


1.57 


1.18 


80 


293 


125 


34 




Ditto of poplar . . 


51.1 


1.17 


0.54 


66 


134 


167 


74 


Leaves fallen in au- 


Ditto of beech . . . 


3-9.3 


1.91 


1.18 


78 


294 


102 


34 


tumn. 


Ditto of acacia . . 


53.6 


1.56 


0.72 


80 


ISO 


125 


56 




Box-tree 


63.3 


2.89 


1.17 


147 


293 


68 


34 


Branches and leaves. 


Burred clover-rooU . 


9.7 


1.77 


1.61 


90 


402.5 


110 


25 


Dried in the air. 


Fucus digitatus , . 


39.2 


1.41 


0.86 


72 


215 


139 


46 


\ 


Idem 


40.0 


1.58 


0.95 


81 


237.5 


123 


42 


> Dried in the air. 


Fucus saccharinus . 


40.0 


2.29 


1.38 


117 


345 


8o 


29 


^ 


Idem 


75.5 




0.64 




135 




74 


Fresh. 


Burnt sea-wee'd . . 


3.8 


6.40 


0.38 


20 


95 


488 


105 




Oyster shells . . . 


17.9 


0.40 


0.32 


20 


80 


488 


125 




SeaiihelU .... 




0.05 


0.05 


3 


13 


3750 


769 


Dried sea shells of 
Dunkirk. 


Mud of the lMorlai.\ 


















rive» 

Trez of Roscofi' roads 


3.7 
0.5 


0.42 
0.14 


0.40 
0.13 


21 

7 


100 
32.5 


464 
1393 


100 

308 


i Sea sand. 


Pea-side marl . . . 


1.0 


0.52 


0.51 


26.5 


128 


377 


78 




Salt cod-tish . . 


38.0 


10.86 


6.70 


557 


1675 


18 


6 




Cod-fish washed and 


















pressed .... 
Fir saw-dust . , . 


10.0 


18.74 


16.86 


961 


4215 


10 


2i 


Dried in the air. 


24.0 


0.22 


0.16 


11 


40 


886 


250 


} 


Idem 


24.0 


0.31 


0.28 


15 


57.5 


62rj 


174 


> Dried in the air. 


Oak saw-dust . . . 


26.0 


0.72 


0.64 


36 


135 


256 


74 


i 


White lupine seed . 


10 5 


4.35 


3.49 ; 223 


872.5 


45 


IIU 


Tuscan, boiled &. dried 


Malt grains .... 


6.0 


4.90 


4.51 1 251 


1127.5 


40 


9 




<jrape husks . . . 


48.2 


3.31 


1.71 1 169 


427.5 


57 


23 




Oil-cake of linseed . 


13.4 


6.00 


5.20 ! 307 


1300 


33 


8 




Ditto of cole wort . . 


10.5 


5.50 


'1.92 1 282 


1230 


35 


8 




Ditto of Arachis , . 


6.6 


8.89 


8.33 ; 655 


2082.5 


21 


4i 




Ditto of madia '. . 


11.1 


5.70 


5.06 ! 292 


1265 


34 


8 




Ditto of sesame . . 


6.5 


5.93 


5.52 i 304 


1378 


33 


7* 




Oil-cake of hempseed 


5.0 


4.78 


4.21 245 


1052 


41 


9i 

n 




Ditto of poppy . . 
Ditto of beech mast . 


6.0 


5.70 


5.36 292 


1340 


34 




6.2 


3.53 


3.31 181 


828 


55 


12" 




Ditto of walnuts . . 


6.0 


5.59 


5.24 287 


1310 


35 


74 




Ditto of cotton seed . 


11.0 


4.53 


1.02 


231 


1000 


32 


10^ 





099 






MANURES. 










g 




Quality ac- 


Equivalent 






« 


100 01 matter 


cording to 
slate. 


according to 
state. 




Kind of Dung. 


1 












Remarks. 


Dry. 


Wet. 


D.y. 


Wet. 


Dry. 


Wet. 


Ditto from refiners . 


10.0 


3.92 


3.54 


201 


883 


50 


UJ 


Recent fat by means 

of poplar sawdust. 
Fish oil by ditto ditto. 


Ditto ditto . . . . 


7.7 


0.58 


0.54 


30 


133 


3.32 


75 


Cider-apple refuse . 


6.4 


0.63 


0.59 


32 


147 


309 


68 


Dried in the air. 


Refuse of hm)S . . 
Beet-root refuse . . 


73.0 


2.23 


0.56 


114 


140 


88 


67 




9.3 


1.26 


1.14 


64 


285 


155 


35 


Dried in the air. 


Idem 


70.0 




0.38 


64 


85 




106 


Fresh from the press. 
Process of Dombo-sle. 


Scjueczed beet-root . 


94.5 


1.76 


0.01 


90 


2 


lii 


4137 


Potato refuse . . . 


73.0 


1.95 


0.53 


lOO 


131.5 


100 


76 




Potuto juice . . . 


95.4 


8.28 


0.38 


425 


94 


23 


106 


Settled and decanted. 


Wiiter of the starcli 


















inanufuctory , , 


99.2 


8.28 


0.07 


425 


17.5 




571 


From washing in four 


Deposite from the wa- 
















volumes of water. 


ter of ditto . . . 


80. 


1.81 


0.36 


92 


90. 


108 


111 


Drainings from heap. 


Idem 


15. 


1.81 


1.54 


92 


384.5 




24 


Dried in the air. 


Solid cow-dung . . 


85.9 


2.30 


0.32 


117 


80 


84 


125 




Urine of cows . . . 


88.3 


3.80 


0.44 


194 


110 


51 


91 




Mixed cow-dung . . 


84.3 


2.59 


0.41 


132 


102.5 


75 


98 




Solid horse-dung . . 


75.3 


2.21 


0.55 


113 


137.5 


88 


73 




Horse urin« .... 


79.1 


12.50 


2.61 


641 


B.52.5 


15.i 


15J 


The horse drank but 


.Mixed horse-dung . 


75.4 


3.02 


0.74 


154 


185 


66- 


54 


little ; the urine was 


I'iij.dung .... 


81.4 


3.37 


0.63 


172 


1.57.5 


58 


63 


thick. 


Sheep-dong . . . 


63.0 


2.99 


l.U 


153 


277.5 


65 


36 




(Joul-dung .... 


46.0 


3.93 


2.16 


201 


540 


50 


184 




I.iiinid Flem. manure 






0.19 




47.5 




210 


In the normal state. 


Idem 






0.22 




55 




1S2, 




I'oudretteof Belloni . 


12.'5 


4.40 


3.85 


225 


962 


44 


loi 


Dried in the air. 


DiltoofiMontfaucon 


41.4 


2.67 


1.56 


137 


390 


73 


25| 




Urine of public vats . 


96. 


17.56 


16.8;^ 


900 


4213 


11 


4 


Dried in the stove. 


Idem 


96.9 


23.11 


0.72 


1133 


179 


8i 


56 


Thin, ammoniacal. 


Animalized black . 


44.6 


1.96 


1.09 


100.5 


272 


98 


37 


Prepared for 11 months 


Idem from the neigh- 


















borhood of Paris . 


42.0 


2.96 


1.24 


151.6 


310.5 


66 


32 


Recently made. 


Idem, called Dutch 


















manure .... 


44.1 


2.48 


1.36 


127 


340 


79 


29'. 


Made at Lyons. 


.\nimalized sea-weed 


12.1 


2.73 


2.40 


140 


600 


7 


16A 


Dried in stove, (from 

Marseilles.) 


Pijieon's dung . . 


9.G 


9.02 


8.30 


462 


2075 


21* 


5 


Of Recbelbronn. 


(inaiio imported into 


















Knglaiid .... 


19.6 


6.20 


5.00 


323 


1247 


3U 


80 


In the ordinary state. 


Idein 


23.4 


7.05 


5.40 


361 


1349 


28- 


74 


Sifted. 


Do. imp. into France 


11.3 


15.73 


13.95 


807 


3487 


12i 


28* 




Sdk-worm litter . . 


14.3 


3.48 


3.29 


178.7 


827 


56 


12 


Fifth age. 


Idem 


11.4 


3.71 


3.29 


190 


822 


53 


12 


Sixth age. 


Chrj-salis of silk-worm 


78.5 


8.99 


1.95 


461 


485 


2U 


204 




(,'cH-k':hafer3 . . . 


77.0 


13.93 


3.20 


714 


801 


14 


13 




IJrii'd muscular flesh 


8.5 


14.25 


13.04 


730 


3260 


134 


3, 


Dried in the air. 




21.4 


15.50 


12.18 


795 


3045 


12i 


3i 


.\s sold. 


l,H,uid blood . . . 


81.0 




2.95 


795 


736 




13i 


From slaughterhouses. 


I.lem ...... 


82.5 




2.71 


795 


580 




15 


From worn-out horses. 


HIiiihI rongulaled and 


















l>ressi-d 


73.5 


17.00 


4. .'51 


871 


1128 


llj 


9, 


Just out of the press. 


Iiis„l,il,le dried blood 


12.3 


17.00 


14.88 


871 


3719 


ll| 


2i 


Dried in nmnulactory. 


DrofTs !rom Prussian 


















blue manufactory . 


53.4 


2.80 


1.31 


144 


626 


7 


304 


Animalized with blood 


Molter's bones . , . 


7.5 


7.58 


7.02 


388 


1754 


26 


6 


Dried in the air. 


I'Vcsh bones .... 


30.0 




5.31 




1326 




74 


,Vs sold by the melters. 


Flit billies, not heated 


8.0 




6.22 




1554 




64 


Including 0.10 of fut. 


Dro^s of bone glue . 


42.0 


6.91 


0.53 


47 


133 


214 


76 




(iliie dregs .... 


a3.6 


5.63 


3.73 


288.4 


933.5 


35 


11. 


As sold by the makers. 


(;rave. 


8.2 


12.93 


11.88 


663 


296953 


15 


34 




Aiiiiiiul black of the 


















siii-'ar refiners . . 


47.7 


2.04 


1.06 


104 


265 


96 


38 


As sent out. 


Siitrar refiner's black 


27.7 


19.01 


13.75 


974 


3437 


103 


28 


From Paris. 


-Sriiiii from the sugar 
















From the sugar baker}' 


rcliiiory .... 
I'.mkIisIi black . . . 


67.0 


1.58 


0.54 


81 


134 1 


127 


75 


of Vigneux. 
Itlood, Time, soot. 


13.5 


8.02 


6.95 


411.4 


1738 


24 


6 


Fnitlicrs 


12.9 


17.61 


15.34 


903 


3833 


11 


2* 




Ci.w. hair flock . . 


8.9 


15.12 


13.78 


775 


3445 


13. 


3 




Wnnllcn rngs . , . 


11.3 


20.2i; 


17.98 


1039 


4495 


H 


2i 




Iliirii shavings . . . 


9.0 


15.78 


14.36 


809 


3.590 


12j 


3 




Ciialsoot .... 


15.6 


1.59 


i.ai 


81 


337.5 


122 


30 




Wood soot .... 


.•i.6 


1.31 ! 


1.15 


67 


287.5 


149 


3.1 




Picardy ashes . . . 


9.2 


0.71, 


0.65 


36 


162.5 


275 


62 




Veget. mould from hu- 




1 














mus dung (terreau) 




1.03 j 


•• 


53 




189 


33 


Dried in the stove. 



MANURES. 299 

It is almost unnecessary to give any explanation of the uses that 
may be made of the preceding table : I shall, however, give a few il- 
lustrations from instances which have actually occurred in my ex- 
perience. 

Oil-cake is cheap at this time, (1842 ;) and the question is, whether 
it could be advantageously employed in connection with the culti- 
vation of wheat. The presumption is, that wheat obtains the whole 
of its azote in the soil, that it acquires none from the atmosphere ; 
and again, I assume that the whole of the azote put into the ground 
would be used up by the crop. Under the most favorable circum- 
stances of heat and moisture, this would probably be the case ; were 
it not so to the letter, the active matter which remained in the 
ground would operate advantageously in succeeding years. The 
following, then, are the elements of the question : 

1st. In the wheat grown at Bechelbronn there is on an average 
0.025 of azote. 2d. In the straw of 1841, 1 have just found 0.003 
of azote. 3d. The oil-cake which I propose to employ contains 
0.055 of azote, and its actual price, crushing included, is 35. 4:d. per 
cwt. 4th. The relation in point of weight of the grain to the straw 
is as 47 : 100. 

A sheaf or bundle of wheat, 220 lbs. in weight, consists of: 

Wheat 70.4 lbs., containing 1.760 of azote, and is worth 4^. 8d. 

Straw 149.6 lbs. " 0.415 " " Is. 8d. 

Total of azote 2.175 Total value 6s. id. 

Difference of value 5s. 4rf. 

To grow which, 39 lbs. of oil-cake would be required, of the 

value of Is. 2d. 

8o that 39 lbs. of oil-cake, converted into a sheaf of wheat, would 
be increased in intrinsic value to the extent of 5^. 2d. Supposing 
that but one-half or one-third of this amount, as indicated by theory, 
is realized in practice, it is obvious that the addition of the oil-cake 
might be made with advantage ; and that no means should be 
neglected to ensure the success of its application as a manure.* 

The production of oil-cake in France, the Netherlands, and other 
countries of Europe, is very considerable ; in round numbers, 100 
of oleaginous seeds yield 60 of cake ; but it has been calculated, 
with rare ability, and from authentic documents, by M. Leroy de 
Bethune, that not only is the whole of the oil-cake, which is the 
produce of the soil of France, exported, but that likewise of the 
oleaginous seeds which she imports from other countries. This M. 
de Bethune looks upon as a very lamentable agricultural fact. I 
have shown, indeed, from the example which I have quoted, that 
every pound of cake represents a primary material, which, properly 
treated, may be transformed into nearly 6 pounds weight of wheat- 
grain and straw, having a value infinitely greater than that of the 
oil-cake originally employed. 

* Our author has of course left many other elements very necessary to be included 
out of his calculation here, such as labor, seed, rent charge, interest on capital, &c. — 
Eng. Ed. 



SOO EXPOKTATION OP MANURES. 

While I agree with M. de Bethune, that it is generally wiue to 
encourage exportation, I also admit with him that there are sub- 
stances in reference to which it would be prudent to discourage ex- 
portation ; oil-cake, this powerful means of giving fertility to the 
soil, might be placed in the foremost rank of such substances. I am 
far from adopting all the principles of economists, which appear to 
me to be frequently far too absolute. In my opinion, any exportation, 
the consequence of which is the impoverishment of the soil, ought 
to be prohibited. I should, for instance, oppose the exportation of 
arable soil ; and in the same way, to allow an active manure to pass 
into the hands of strangers, is, in my eyes, tantamount to exporting 
the vegetable soil of our fields, to lessening their productiveness, to 
raising the price of the food of the poor ; for as much labor is re- 
quired, as much care and capital must be expended upon an ungrate- 
ful soil to obtain a little, as upon a fertile soil to procure an ample 
return. To permit the exportation of oil-cake is to hinder the hus- 
bandman from taking advantage of all the circumstances with which 
nature presents him ; it is as if a chill were to be brought over the 
genial climate of France.* 

I have shown the advantages of the application of oil-cake in the 
growth of wheat. I shall now inquire whether or not it is equdlly 
useful in connection with hay and potato crops ; the price of the 
article being presumed to be the same as before. 

Upland meadows, when they have not been soiled, yield miserable 
returns, and their situation renders them difficult of access to carts : 
oil-cake in such circumstances comes powerfully to our aid. 

Taking the price of hay at 5s. per 220 lbs., which is about its 
present price in France, and taking into account the composition of 
the after-math, we may reckon the azote contained in the hay of 
natural meadows at 0.015. 

QSO lbs. of hay, containing 3 lbs. of a/.ote, will be wortli 5x. Od. 

To produce which .56 lbs. of cake (azote 3.3 lbs.) worth Is. Bd. 

would be required. 

Difterence in value between the cost and the crop 3s. 4d. 

Upon this showing, oil-cake may be advantageously employed in 
the amelioration of upland meadows. Besides the cost of the ma- 
nure, however, there are the very necessary additions to be made of 
the price of labor and rent. 

From the observations which I made at Bechelbronn in 1839, I 

* I own I am surprised at this passage in my esteemed author. There is nolhiii!; 
parallel in the instances he (juotes. Did not the French husbandmen and oil-pressers 
profit by the exportation of oil-cake they would keep it Jit home ; and the profit of tho 
tanner and manufacturer is the profit of the whole couununity. To export the soil 
would indeed he machiess: it would obviously be killing the poose that lays the poldcn 
eggs ; but to export tliat which the soil producr's in abundance year after year, is a 
totally dillcrent atlair. M. Boussingault's reasoning would lend the wine-growers of 
Bordeaux and Unrgundy to refuse us u hogshead of their smallest growth: t/icy cnnnot 
stud it to us williout impovcri.'^hing their soil, any more than they inn tit us hare a pound 
of their oil-cake, liut one half of the vegcfiblos I'hat grow, at least, are at work ac- 
cumulating the materials from the atmosphere and water, out of which the ether half 
are supplied, and so the process of waste and supply, of destruction und reproduction, 
toes oil without limits, and without end.— F.no. Ed. 



USE OF THE PRECEDING TABLE. 301 

find that the relation between the weight of potatoes as they come 
from the ground, and that of the tops or haum, supposed to be dry, 
is as 100 is to 6.4. 

The tubers contain : 
Azote 0.0036 per 10000 parts ; and 220 lbs. contain 0.729 of a lb. of 

azote, and are worth Is. 8d. 

The tops or haum, dry, contain : 

Azote 0.0230 per 10000 parts ; and 14 lbs. contain 0.330 of a pound 

of azote. 
Total of azote 1.122. 
Now 20.4 lbs. of cake which would be required to produce 220 

lbs. of potatoes, contain 1.1 lb. of azote, and are worth Os. 7Jd. 

Difference Is. OJd. 

The oil-cake at the price of 35. 2d. per cwt. may therefore be ad- 
vantageously used for the production of potatoes : rent, labor, seed, 
&c., considered as before. At the price of 75. 6d. or 85. 6d. per 
cwt., however, to which oil-cake occasionally rises, it would not be 
possible to employ it profitably in this way. The cost of the manure 
would then amount to nearly as much as the value of the crop. 

The equivalent numbers in the table express the relative values 
of different manures ; they proclaim the proportions in which one 
substance must be substituted for another, and when purchases are 
to be made, they will show at a glance which is the article that is 
really, and in fact, the cheapest. The equivalent number of one 
variety of oil-cake, for instance, is 7.25 ; that of farm-yard dung is 
100 ; which is as much as to say that in reference to mere fertilizing 
elements, 100 parts — lbs. cwts. or tons, of farm-yard dung may be 
replaced by 7| parts — lbs. cwts. or tons of oil-cake ; — 2 cwt. of 
farm-dung, for instance, by 14^ lbs. of cake. The 2 cwt. of farm- 
dung is valued in the table at 6d., or about 55. per ton ; the 14^ lbs. 
of cake would cost 5-^d. It is obvious, therefore, that even at the 
above low price of oil-cake, there would be no real advantage in 
substituting it generally for farm-yard dung ; in situations, however, 
remote from large towns, where it is almost impossible to procure 
dung, or where the carriage of large masses of dung would be both 
difficult and expensive, there would then be advantage in the sub- 
stitution. 

Woollen rags at the price of about 25. 10^. per cwt. are more pro- 
fitable than farm-yard dung at 3d. per cwt. The equivalent of the 
rags is 2.22, and this quantity (2.22 lbs. avoird.) of rags is worth 
about frf. ; by the substitution of the rags for farm-yard manure, 
therefore, a saving is effected of about 2ld. on every cwt. of the 
latter that must have been employed. In good farming, however, 
it is less with reference to the money advantage of substituting one 
manure for another, that calculations are made, than with reference 
to the possibility of procuring either one manure or another at a 
moderate price. Tiie estimated value of the dung in one of the 
columns of the table gives us at once the price that may be paid for 
it ; for this purpose it is enough to know the value of standard dung : 
let this be as it usually is, 3d. per cwt. ; if we would now know 
what may be paid for a hundred weight of bones simply dried in the 

26 



302 VALUE OK DIFFERENT MANURES. 

air, the number designating these being 1554, we have only to make 
a simple equation in the following terms : — 100 : 3d. : : 1554 : jt, to 
have the solution : =3s. lO^d. 

The most careful consideration of the relative value of different 
manures under the guidance of the analytical elements which I have 
indicated, justifies the preference whicli is given in practice to one 
kind over another, which on simple examination appears to offer 
greater advantages. Thus, by diffusing oil-cake through water, and 
leaving the mixture to ferment, a manure is obtained which presents 
all the characters, wiiich possesses all the properties of human soil 
that has undergone fermentation in privies or cess-])()ols. And it is 
to this mixture of putrid oil-cake tiiat the husbandmen of French 
Flanders have recourse, as we have seen, when their supply of 
night-soil runs short. When oil-cake is low in price, say about 3.v. 
3d. or 3s. 4d. per cwt., it might seem advantageous to manufacture 
Flemish manure with it ; expensive carriage and time would l)e 
saved ; for night-soil has generally to be fetched from a distance, 
and containing but 0.002 (i-^^n ths) of azote, it is bulky, and its equiv- 
alent is in the same proportion high. Cameline oil-cake contains 
0.055 (yI l^ths) of azote ; to make Flemish manure that should con- 
tain 0.002 of azote, it would be requisite to add to every 100 parts 
of cake 2,630 parts of water ; the cwt. of this manure would then 
come to l4f?., while Flemish manure prepared with night-soil, would 
cost the farmer but 1 jt/. I have here taken the cake at a low price ; 
were it 7.?. 6d. per cwt. instead of 3s. 9d., which is perhaps much 
nearer its usual average cost, it is obvious that the cwt. of manure 
prepared from it, would cost twice as much more. 

The proportion of azote, the value, and the equivalents of the 
several manures are given in the table, both for the substances ab- 
solutely dry, and for the condition in which they are commonly em- 
l)loyed. This distinction is one of great importance. The water, 
the quantity of which is indicated in the first column, is a most 
variable constituent ; its presence, of course, depreciates the ma- 
nure in the precise ratio in which it occurs. The reference of all 
the elements of each particular manure to that manure in a state of 
aljsolute dryness, is a very important feature in the table. In pur- 
chasing manures, the precaution of drying them chemically must 
never be neglected, more especially in connection with articles, 
which by their nature are capable of absorbing water in consider- 
able, and often in very different, quantities. 



LIMING. 303 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF MINERAL MANURES OR STIMULANTS. 

All the organic manures, when burned, leave ashes composed of 
earthy and saline substances. The action of these substances upon 
vegetation is quite unquestionable, and it is certain that an organic 
manure, were it ever so rich in azotized principles, and ever so as- 
similable, would still be imperfect did it not further contain the truly 
mineral matters which plants require to meet with in the soil, in 
order to complete their growth and bring their seeds to maturity. 
The most active organic manures are always abundantly provided 
with inorganic principles. Farm dung (dry) contains about one- 
fourth of its weight of such substances, and the water which is used 
for irrigation invariably holds saline matter in solution. 

Nevertheless, repeated cropping will often end by depriving the 
soil of the mineral substances which plants require ; the salts con- 
tained in the manure supplied are sometimes inadequate to meet 
the demands of successive crops, and then the return falls off. It 
is consequently necessary in certain cases to furnish the soil anew 
with saline matters, in order to supply the continued drain that is 
made upon it, or to meet the exigencies of particular crops which 
are known to require an unusually large quantity of salts for their 
successful cultivation. It is in this way that clover, lucern, and 
sainfoin require plaster, (gypsum ;) the cereals, silica, and certain 
calcareous salts ; the vine, potash, &c. ' 

Practice got the start of science in the application of mineral ma- 
nures or stimulants. If their useful influence cannot be denied, as 
it cannot, if the circumstances in which it is advantageous to admin- 
ister them, if the conditions and the doses in which they ought to be 
given to the ground have been the subject of long and careful obser- 
vation with farmers, it must still be admitted that we are far from 
understanding exactly in what way they act ; this is another motive 
for continuing to study them with perseverance. 

CALCAREOUS MANURES. 

In certain soils we have said that the calcareous element is either 
wanting, or present in very small and inadequate quantity ; other 
soils, again, abound in calcareous matter, and observation appears to 
prove that the presence of carbonate of lime in a soil adds unequivo- 
cally to its fertility. The majority of the good wheat lands hitherto 
examined have been found to contain a notable quantity of this earth 
or earthy salt. 

It is usual to put lime into the ground in the state of caustic or 
quick-lime ; this is liming, properly so called. But it is also ap- 
plied in the state of carbonate, as when we make use of chalk or 
marl, or shell-sand from the sea-shore. 



304 LIMING. 

The limestone that is used for burning is seldom pure ; it fre- 
quently contains clay, quartzy sand, metallic oxides, and occasionally 
carbonaceous matter ; frequently too it is so largely mixed with 
magnesia that it acquires peculiar characters ; this is the magnesian 
limestone or dolomite. The purest carbonate of lime, by exposure 
for some time to a white heat, Joses 43.7 of carbonic acid, and con- 
sequently contains 56.3 of caustic lime. Limestone is one of the 
most common of rocks ; in the crystalline and saccharoid state, or 
of closer and finer grain, it often constitutes mountain masses, and 
is met with in every part of the geological series ; it meets us as 
chalk in beds of enormous thickness, filling up extensive basins in 
the tertiary series ; such are the chalk beds of the south and west 
coasts of England, extending througli the counties of Kent and 
Sussex, &c. 

The only mineral substance with which chalk, limestone, or car- 
bonate of lime is likely to be confounded, is gypsum or sulphate of 
lime. But it is easy to distinguish either of these salts from tiie 
other: carbonate of lime dissolves, with eflervescence in dilule 
hydrochloric acid ; sulphate of lime is insoluble in this liquid. 
Carbonate of lime is quite insoluble in water ; sulphate of lime is 
very sensibly soluble, and a copious precipitate falls on the addition 
of a solution of oxalic acid or of oxalate of ammonia. Gypsum is 
always so soft that it can be scratched witii the nail ; limestone, 
save in the state of chalk, is generally so hard that it resists the 
nail. 

The burning of lime for agricultural uses is carried on m the same 
way as for building and other economical purjjoses. Burnt or quick- 
lime is a very diOerent article from chalk or limestone ; it is power- 
fully caustic or destructive of the organic tissue, and instead of 
being altogether insoluble, it is now soluble in about 630 parts of 
cold water. All the world knows how lime from the kiln, when 
watered, rises in temperature, breaks first into larger and then into 
smaller pieces, and finally falls down into fine powder; but every 
one is not aware that there is a true chemical union of water with 
the earth, and that the resulting powdcn- is in chemical language a 
hydrate of lime, a substance which is much less caustic than pure 
lime, but still distinctly alkaline in its reaction. 

It is generally admitted that the soil which is without a certain, 
and that a considerable proportion of the calcareous element, never 
possesses a high degree of fertility. This in particular is the opin- 
ion of English agriculturists, who apply lime with a kind of profu- 
sion ; and the great improvement it freciuently produces on the crops 
of grain, leaves no doubt as to the advantages of the procedure. 
Still it is now generally recognized that liming ceases to be useful 
upon lands that are already sufficiently calcareous, or that rest on a 
sub-soil of chalk. It is, therefore, by supi)lying the calcareous ele- 
ment which land requires to constitute it a soil adapted totiie growth 
of corn, that the ap))lication of lime becomes useful ; liming, in 
fact, enables us to make this necessary addition at least cost. Like 
other mineral manures, lime of itself produces little or no effect ; 



LIMING. 305 

it is in concurrence with organic manures that it becomes truly use- 
ful ; it is nowise, and never can become, a substitute ibr these. 

The geological constitution of a country is perhaps the best guide 
10 the necessity or advantages of liming. Soils that are derived 
from plutonic or igneous rocks, in which felspar, mica, or quartz 
predominate, are on the face of things likely to be improved by the 
introduction of lime. Direct analysis would of course give more 
decisive information on the fact. In any case, the measure recom- 
mended by prudence is to make a few preliminary trials upon the 
small scale ; the experimental method is the only safe one in agri- 
culture, when the question is in regard to the adoption of new plans. 
In England it is customary in liming clayey lands to allow from 
230 to 300 or 310 bushels of stimulant per acre ; on lighter soils 
the dose may vary from about 150 to 200 bushels, according to their 
character. In France the quantity usually employed is greatly less, 
from about 60 to 70 bushels being all that is generally thought ad- 
visable, and this at intervals of seven or eight years. In the neigh- 
borhood of Lisle little use is made of lime, although there the land 
is generally any thing but calcareous ; perhaps the want of lime is 
not felt in consequence of the universal practice of employing the 
Flemish manure, which, as we have seen, contains ammoniacal 
salts, (and both human urine and excrement contain a large quantity 
of phosphate of lime and pliosphate of magnesia in addition, the 
very salts that the generality of vegetables crave.) In the vicinity 
of Dunkirk, however, lime is frequently applied in the dose of be- 
tween 40 and 50 bushels per acre, and with effects that are said to 
continue for ten or twelve years. 

The dose of lime introduced into the soil in different countries, is 
moreover in a certain relation with the time during which the action 
of the earth is believed to continue ; as the quantity administered at 
once is small, the dose must be repeated more frequently. Near 
Dunkirk they use from 40 to 50 bushels per acre every 10 or 12 
years ; in the department of La Sarthe, according to M. Puvis, they 
scatter on some 9 or 10 bushels only ; but they do so every three 
years. This would lead us to conclude that soils which really 
wanted lime should receive a dose in the proportion of about 31 
bushels per acre annually. But the crops gathered from the ground 
every year, certainly do not abstract any thing like this quantity of 
calcareous matter ; which would induce us to infer, that after a cer- 
tain time the land will contain such a quantity of lime as to make 
any further addition of it unnecessary, or at all events, unnecessary 
save at rare and distant intervals. 

One of the great advantages which lime has over all the other 
forms or kinds of calcareous stimulants employed, is unquestionably 
the state of extreme subdivision which it acquires in the quenching. 
In the course of falling down into this extremely fine powder, lime, 
as has been said, combines with a large quantity of water. But the 
change experienced does not stop short here ; the air always contains 
some 10,000ths of carbonic acid gas, for which the hydrate of lime 
has a powerful affinity, so that it absorbs this gas greedily, aban- 

26* 



306 LIMING. 

doning, at the same time, its constitutional water, by which, in due 
season, the hydrate of lime becomes changed into the anhydrous 
carbonate of lime. 'J'his process is always slow ; more rapid at 
first, when the interchange between the carbonic acid and water 
takes place freely ; it becomes gradually slower and slower as there 
is less and less water left in the particles : the affinity of the lime 
for the water seems to increase continually in the ratio of the smail- 
ness of the quantity which it still contains. It must, therefore, con- 
stantly happen that in incorporating lime, in powder and partially 
carbonated with the soil, we also introduce lime that has preserved 
its causticity in some measure ; it must be observed, however, that, 
once intimately mixed with the soil, this lime must speedily pass 
into the state of carbonate, because the soil and the water with which 
it is moistened always contain a considerable quantity of carbonic 
acid. Though we commence operations with quick-lime, conse- 
quently, it is carbonate of lime that is definitively introduced into the 
ground. 1 have thought this a point of sufficient importance to en- 
gage our attention for a short time, inasmuch as it simplifies the 
view of the end that is to be sought in applying lime; this, as M. 
Puvis has most satisfactorily est.;iblished, is neither more nor less 
than the introduction into the ground of that proportion of the calca- 
reous element which it either wanted originally, or which it has lost 
in the course of repeated cropping, in order to enable it to produce 
abundantly. Quick-lime incorporated with the soil must pass, as I 
have shown, very rapidly into the state of carbonate ; but, before 
attaining to this state, it may, unquestionably, react upon the organic 
substances it encounters, disorganize them, favor their decomposi- 
tion, in a word, behave as it does when used in composts. On the 
other hand, in causing the destruction of organic particles already 
in a state of decomposition, it must produce an unfavorable influ- 
ence. 

Lime, previously quenched and cold, is generally spread by being 
raked out from the cart upon the field, in little heaps, from five to six 
or seven yards apart, each containing from half to two-thirds of a 
bushel. It is or ought then to be spread immediately as evenly as 
possible over the surface. There is only the disadvantage attending 
this mode of proceeding, that slaked lime is twice the bulk of lime 
in the shell or lump, and that, by slaking, it takes up at least one- 
fifth of its original weight of water. There is saving of labor, 
therefore, in distributing the lime unslaked, in heaps, and waiting the 
slow process of extinction and pulverization by the moisture of the 
atmosphere. The lime is often laid in a corner of the field, and 
covered lightly over with vegetable earth to undergo pulverization, 
and this plan answ-ers very well. Sometimes the lime, before being 
laid on, is v.'orked up into a kind of compost with vegetable mould 
and other matters ; this is all matter of calculation as to cost. If 
our object be to supply the soil with the calcareous elements it wants, 
the proper procedure is quite obvious. 

The mode of using lime with reference to other improvers of the 
soil varies in different places. In one place it is usual to lime and 



MARL. 307 

to dung alternately ; in others, the two operations are done together, 
or very close upon one another. There are some lands so fertile, 
that they produce abundantly under the influence of lime alone. In 
laying on lime, one general rule is, that the weather should be dry, 
and the ground well drained ; the end of summer is probably the 
most favorable season. To say nothing of the difficulty of spreading 
the lime in wet weather, if it is at all fresh, its caustic qualities are 
brought into immediate play by the moisture, and it destroys the 
roots of living vegetables, and the organic elements of the soil ; and, 
again, it is quite certain that lime produces very little effect upon 
undrained and wet lands. In England, lime is very commonly used 
upon fallows, in the course of the summer, and before sowing the 
wheat for which fallowing is always a preparation. When it is given 
to land destined for beet or potatoes, it is led out in the spring, and 
spread before the young beet is transplanted, in the one case, the 
seed-potatoes deposited, in the other. 

It is always matter of great moment to have lime spread evenly ; 
a thorough harrowing and a double superficial ploughing incorporate 
it sufficiently. According to M. Puvis, who has made a particular 
study of the subject of liming, as practised in the department of the 
Ain, a quantity of lime, amounting to 8,250 bushels, spread upon 
seventy-seven acres of land, in the course of nine years, produced 
so decided an improvement that the returns from winter-grain crops 
became the double of what they had been before. 

Marl. Marl, in a general way, may be regarded as a mixture of 
carbonate of lime and clay in very variable proportions. Occasional- 
ly the clay is replaced by sand ; whence the titles, sandy marl, argil- 
laceous marl. The article, in short, contains from 15 to as many as 
90 per cent, of carbonate of lime. It presents numerous shades of 
color. Geologically speaking, it is usually met with in fresh-water 
formations of the latest date — the upper strata of the Jura limestone 
are frequently covered with deposites of argillaceous marls, and we 
see its formation going on at the bottoms of lakes and ponds, at the 
present day. 

The distinguishing property of a calcareous marl, whatever ad- 
mixture of other matters it contains, is that of crumbling to pieces 
under exposure to atmospherical influences. Every limestone rock 
that has this property may be considered and employed as a marl. 
The grand purpose of putting marl upon land is to supply it with the 
calcareous element it wants. To marl land, is therefore tantamount 
to liming it : the effect is the same. The value of the article is, 
indeed, so well known, that considerable expense is constantly in- 
curred to get at the beds of it that form strata in the crust of the 
earth, or that lie at the bottoms of lakes. It appears to have been 
employed from the remotest antiquity. 

The reason why marl and marly limestones fall so completely 
into powder, is obvious. If the mass, when wet, form a pasty mass, 
it shrinks as it dries, and cracks in all directions ; if more consistent, 
it is still always porous, and having imbibed a large quantity of rain 
in the autumn, this congeals daring the frusts of the succeeding win- 



308 MAKL. 

ter, and the ice, expanding with almost irresistible force, separates 
the particles, which cohere, indeed, so long as the frost continues, 
but fall away from one another on the first thaw, by which the solid 
rock of the autumn and winter becomes a heap of dust in the spring. 
In the same way, we see chalk, exposed to the wet and the frost, 
fall down to powder, and, in virtue of this property, and its constitu- 
tion as carbonate of lime, employed with perfect success in lieu of 
lime and marl. Wherever there is a bed of chalk at hand, it is need- 
less to go further in search of marl and quick-lime, in so far at least 
as the calcareous principle is concerned. 

Argillaceous marl and sandy marl must, of course, act in two 
different ways upon the soil : in virtue of the calcareous element in 
either case, and in virtue of the argillaceous principle in the one, 
of the sandy principle in the other ; and the kind of soil for which 
they are severally adapted can be conceived beforehand. To a stiff, 
clayey soil, we would naturally add the sandy marl; to a light sandy 
soil we would supply the argillaceous product, and thus effect im- 
provement by a kind of double tide. It is therefore very important to 
distinguish between these two effects produced by marl — one me- 
chanical, connected with the presence of clay or sand ; the other 
chemical, and depending on the presence of carbonate of lime. It is 
to these two effects, separately and combined, that all the influence 
of marl is usually ascribed by practical agriculturists. From certain 
inquiries common to M. Payen and me, however, it appears that 
marl must act in yet another way ; our analyses show that it always 
contains a certain though variable proportion of azotized matter. 
And there is nothing extraordinary in the discovery of this fact ; it 
is no more than might have been anticipated from the geological cir- 
cumstances attending its production. Marls are, as has been said, 
always connected with the most recent formations of the tertiary 
series ; they are constantly accompanied by remains, which attest 
the presence of organic beings, and frequently they consist of little 
else than shells, and the disintegrated dwellings and bodies of mo- 
luseas, and madrepores, and corallines, and other inferior forms of 
things that once had life. It is by no means astonishing, therefore, 
that deposites which have had such an original should still contain 
evidences of the presence of the softer and more decompoundable, as 
well as of the harder and more rebellious constituents of the beings 
to%hose existence they are due. One sample of marl which we 
analyzed, gave 0.003 of azote ; another, from the Lower Rliine, 
gave rather more than 0.001 of the same element. It were, there- 
fore, very proper, in analyzing marks, chalks, &c , to have an eye tt' 
their organic or azotic, as well as to tbeir mineral constituents ; ther( 
can be very little (piestion of the azotized elements being at ti>e hot 
tom of the really wonderful fertilizing inlluences of the marls of 
certain districts. 

Marl ought, like lime, to be spread very evenly over the land ; i' 
is generally laid on in the same way as lime — in little heaj)S at re 
gulai distances, and then scattered abroad. It appears to be a verj 
general opinion that it is not advisable to cover it immediately, or verj 



MARL. 309 

shortly after it is dug from the bed that supplies it ; the practice 
where its employment is most general, and probably best understood, 
is to let it lie exposed through the summer or winter, or even the 
whole year before laying it on the land. It is also held not to be 
proper to cover it in marl deeply. Marl is advantageously laid out 
in heaps "upon stubbles in the autumn ; and in the early spring when 
it has been pulverized by the frost, it is spread with the shovel. 
When it is to be used with winter wheat or rye, it is laid on in the 
summer, and spread at the time of ploughing ; the latter plan of 
proceeding, however, as Schwerlz observes, can only be followed 
whh marl that pulverizes readily. In England it is also laid down 
as a kind of principle that marl ought to be exposed for as long a 
time as possible to the influences of the atmosphere ; that it ought 
to have a summer's heat and a winter's cold before it is applied. 
And that, in fact, which is at all consistent, and has not been expos- 
ed to the frost, scarcely pulverizes sufficiently to be readily miscible 
with the soil even under the influence of repeated ploughings ; more- 
over, it produces very little obvious effect upon the crop with which 
it is first used. After spreading, a rough harrow is passed over the 
surface of the ground, which is then ploughed superficially two or 
three times, the harrow being again had recourse to repeatedly to 
break lumps, and so bring out-the effect of the marl. 

The quantity of marl that may be advantageously given varies 
according to the circumstances of the district. Marl, it may fairly 
be said, is frequently abused. In an excellent paper on the subject, 
M. Puvis lays it down as a principle that the first element in the 
calculation of the proper dose of marl, is the quantity of calcareous 
matter that is wanting in the soil. He says that every soil which 
contains more than 9 or 10 per cent, of carbonate of lime can dis- 
pense with marl ; and that soils in which the lime falls short of this 
quantity, may advantageously receive a dose or successive doses of 
the substance that will bring them up to the point. The proper 
dose, consequently, depends first on the proportion of carbonate of 
lime contained in the soil, and then on that which the marl itself 
includes. 

Considered from the rational point of view which M. Puvis has 
taken, marling is no longer an arbitrary process, but one that may 
be conducted on determinate principles. The extravagant quanti- 
ties that are often laid on without other assignable reason than blind 
custom, are shown to be, if not injurious, yet useless : the quantity 
of marl to be incorporated is determined by the quality of the sub- 
stance which is at our disposal, and by the depth of the layer of 
vegetable earth taken in connection with its chemical constitution. 
To facilitate the calculation of the proper dose, M. Puvis has drawn 
up a table, which, as it may be found useful in practice, I append. 
It shows at a glance the quantity of marl in cubic feet that ought to 
be put upon an acre of ground, the depth of the arable soil being 
considered in connection with the composition of the marl at com- 
mand : — 



310 



MARL. 



Table of the Number of Cubic Feet of Marl applicable upon an 
Acre of Land ploughed to the depth of: 


When 100 
parts of marl 

contain of 

carbonate of 

lime, 


inches. 


4fV 
inches. 


5^ 
inches. 


inches. 


7tV 
inches. 


a 6 

inches. 


333 

166.V 
111' 

83^V 
66^ 
55 p^ 

47A 
41 s_ 

^' I 

37 


444 
222 
146 
111 

88tV 
74 

63 r'^ 

35 ,\ 

44,L 


554 

277 

l84/o 

138f„- 

llO/o 

92^ 

79tV 
69^ 

6U 

55-,V 


666 
333 

222 
166 r^ 
133^ 
111 

95tV 
83 A 

74 
66/, 


776 

388 

258/^ 

194 

155J^ 

129Tlr 

iioA 

97 

86/o 
77t'V 


888 

444 

296 

222 

177^ 

148 

126A 

111 
98 A 
88tV 


10 
20 
30 
40 
50 
60 
70 
80 
90 
100 



M. Puvis does not by any means give the doses in this table as 
those that should be invariably employed ; the table is one of aver- 
ages, deduced from practical results, and tested by experience as 
most truly useful. But special cases may occur that would make 
departure from these conclusions not only advisable, but advantage- 
ous.* 

The use of marl produces an unquestionable effect on the pro- 
ductive properties of the soil. According to M. Puvis, the applica- 
tion of the proper dose of a sandy marl, containing from 30 to 60 per 
cent, of carbonate of lime, doubled the produce of a piece of parched 
land in the department of the Isere. Before the application of the 
marl nothing but dwarfish csrops of rye were gathered, yielding at 
most three for one of the seed ; at present, eight for one of seed, 
and that wheat, are obtained ; and the good effects are found to 
continue for ten and even twelve years. 

The action of marl is not unlimited any more than that of lime, 
as the last sentence will give the reader reason to conclude. With 
every harvest, a certain proportion of it is carried off, and the land 
is finally left with an inadequate quantity of the calcareous element, 
which then requires to be restorsd. The nature of the crop, how- 
ever, has the most marked influence on the quantity of lime that is 
taken up and carried liway iVom the soil ; allowing the broadest 
margin, and judging from the composition of the ashes of the plants 
thai form the subjects of our ordinary crops, we can see that the 
(piantity of 3h bushels of marl of the usual composition per acre, 
which is assumed as the average quantity to be laid on, is vastly 
more than can be absolutely necessary. 

Wood ashes contribute to improve the soil. They contain, besides 
silica, both phosphate and carbonate of lime and alkaline sulphates, 
phosphates, and carbonates. In a general way, every thing derived 

* Puvis in Annals of I'rench AgricuUurc, vol. .T-wiii. p. 328, 2d series. 



PEAT ASHES. 311 

from plants that have lived must be useful to plants that are about 
to live, or that are actually living. Although the utility of wood 
ashes, then, is generally admitted, the numerous purposes to which 
they are applied in the arts, and their high price, which is the con- 
sequence of this, enable the husbandman to employ them but rarely 
on his land ; they are almost always lixiviated in order to procure 
the carbonate of potash they contain. In countries which are thick- 
ly wooded, indeed, the trees are actually cut down and burned for 
the sake of their ashes, just as oxen are run down and slaughtered 
in the vast plains of South America for the sake of their hides. 

The good effect of wood ashes upon vegetation is known to com- 
munities the least advanced in civilization. The Indians of South 
America burn the stems and leaves of the maize in order to improve 
the soil. The same practice occurs among the natives of Africa : 
on the banks of the river Zaire, according to Tuckey, the ground is 
prepared by having little piles of dried herbs placed on it, to which 
fire is set ; and upon the spots where the ashes are collected, they 
sow peas and Indian corn ; these ashes are in fact the only manure 
that is employed. In England, wood ashes are esteemed as parti- 
cularly useful upon gravelly soils ; about 40 bushels per acre are 
applied in the spring, where the article can be obtained. 

The lye-ashcs from the soap-boiler contain a small quantity of 
soluble saline matter which has escaped the lixiviation, mixed with 
a large proportion of lime, partly in the state of carbonate, the lime 
having been added to bring the carbonate of potash employed in the 
manufacture of soap into the caustic state. This ash or refuse is 
much sought after, and is administered in quantities that vary from 
45 to 70 bushels per acre, a dose in which its action is felt for ten 
years or more. In wooded districts, where there is a good deal of 
potash prepared, ash of this kind is obtained in large quantity ; it is 
there employed alternately with organic manures. Ashes are ap- 
plied in the same way as lime, with this difference, that it is held 
better not to plough them in until they have received a little rain. 
There are places where the ashes that remain in the lixiviating tub 
are thrown on in the dose of 170 bushels per acre. 

Turf or peat ashes. Peat is the result of a peculiar spontaneous 
change that takes place in vegetables. It is produced in bogs or 
swamps, and in connection with stagnant waters ; turfy deposites are 
also encountered on the banks of rivers, in valleys, at the bottoms 
of former lakes, and at the mouths of rivers. Peat is met with 
from the level of the sea to the elevated platforms of the Vosges 
and Alps ; it lies in horizontal beds, frequently divided by strata of 
gravel, sand, or clay. It is always a product of comparatively re- 
cent formation, a fact which is attested by the thin layers of vege- 
table soil that lie over it in many places, and the animal remains 
and products of human industry that are frequently encountered 
in it. 

The state of decomposition of the vegetables that form turf or 
peat is seldom so far advanced as to make the remains of the plants 
which compose it doubtful. It is of diffftrent kinds : hard or woody, 



312 PEAT ASHES. 

and soft or herbaceous peat. Some of it is extremely compact, 
black, and like vegetable mould in appearance ; generally speaking 
it is light, spongy, and of a lighter or deeper shade of brown. 
When quite dry, it is often extremely light ; a cubic metre, which 
is about one-eleventh more than a cubic yard, will weigh from 5 to 6 
cwt. 

The circumstances in which turf has been found lead us to infer 
that it must contain the elementary insoluble elements of the plants 
that produced it. It appears, however, to contain a somewhat lar- 
ger proportion of azote than the average quantity met with in her- 
baceous vegetables, supposed dry ; but we have seen that in the 
slow alteration of lignine, azote becomes concentrated, as it were, 
in the residue ; and that, in fine, mould contains a larger quantity of 
azote than the wood from which it proceeds. It appears further 
from some experiments very lately performed by Mr. Hermann, that 
during the putrefaction of the woody principle, azote is actually ta- 
ken from the air to concur in the formation of certain products that 
are perfectly definite. Mr. Hermann quotes the following experi- 
ment : 

Twenty-eight parts of wood taken from a log already attacked 
with rot, and in which, indeed, there were several points already 
decayed, were moistened and enclosed in a jar containing atmo- 
spherical air over mercury. The bulk of the atmosphere contained 
in the bell-glass was 262 volumes. The wood was kept there for 
ten days at a temperature of 75.2° Fahr. The apparent volume of 
the air continued unaltered to the end of the experiment ; but a 
large quantity of carbonic acid had been formed : 

RESULTS ON THE INCLUDED AIR. 

Before. Afier. 

The air contained : Azote 207 vols. 194 vols. 

Carbonic acid 40 " 

Oxygen • ••• 5r, 28 " 

2G2 262 

The moist wood in its decomposition during ten days had conse- 
quently caused thirteen volumes of azote and twenty-seven volumes 
of oxygen to disappear. And Mr. Hermann found that it now con- 
tained principles analogous to those of humus, one of which, nitro- 
lin, is highly azotized, and by the ulterior action of air and moisture, 
gives rise to ulmate of ammonia. These experiments of Mr. Her- 
mann are new, and the conclusions to which they lead are both inter- 
esting and important.* 

Turf or poat is virtually the woody principle in the last stage of 
modification by atmospherical infiucncos ; but it appears still to con- 
tain, although modified, tlie usual principles which enter into the 
constitution of herbaceous vegetables also. M. Payen detected a 
quantity of fatty matter in it, analogous to that which e.xists in 
leaves, and M. Reinsch found it to contain tannin. One sample of 

* Vide his paper in .Tourn. fiir prakt. Chcniie, 1). x.xiii. s. 379. 



PEAT ASHES. 313 

turf (from the neighborhood of Moscow, by the way) examined by 
Mr. Hermann, yielded of carbonaceous matter, nitrolin and vegeta- 
ble remains 77.5 ; of ulmic acid 17.0 ; extract of humus 4.0 ; am- 
monia 0.25; and ash 125=100.0. The elementary composition of 
these varieties of turf, analyzed by M. Regnault, gave from 57 to 
58 of carbon ; 5.1 to 5.6 hydrogen ; 30.8 to 31.8 oxygen and azote ; 
and 4.6 to 5.6 ashes. 

Turf or peat has consequently a certain resemblance to mould or 
humus ; it differs, however, in the absence of substances soluble in 
ivater ; and it is easy to imagine that, produced as it is in connection 
with water, continually soaked in moisture, soluble matters ought 
not to be expected in it in appreciable quantity. Peat might, in 
lact, be likened to the insoluble part of humus left after lixiviation. 
A.nd there is this further resemblance, that peat, like the humus 
ivhich has been thoroughly lixiviated, if exposed to the air, by and 
•jy acquires a quantity of soluble material, the evolution of which is 
also hastened by the contact of the alkalies. The employment of 
iurf as manure, in some countries, confirms the propriety of this 
mode of viewing its nature and constitution ; and then it is well 
known that bogs consisting of pure turf, when drained and limed, 
become tolerably fertile lands, yielding magnificent crops of oats 
and turnips especially. 

The ashes of turf we might expect to contain the mineral sub- 
stances usually found in the ashes of plants, and further a certain 
ijuantity of additional earthy matter. But this is not the case : sev- 
eral alkaline salts, indeed, have been discovered in very small pro- 
portion ; but no chemist, to my knowledge, has ever even suspected 
the presence of any of the phosphates ; a special search which was 
made for them in my laboratory failed to discover them. This is a 
fact which, I own, amazed me ; some coal ash, and another ash 
produced from lignite, gave a result equally negative. We might 
imagine the disappearance of the soluble salts ; but how the earthy 
phosphates should disappear ; how the ashes of coal should come 
10 be without a trace of phosphoric acid, when we see that the iron 
ore, in connection with the coal fields, is always more or less phos- 
phorigerous,* is surprising. 

Turf or peat ashes are valuable improvers of the soil, and are in 
^reat request among intelligent farmers. Analysis, in fact, indicates 
several substances m their composition as calculated to assist vege- 
tation ; carbonate of lime, in a state of extreme subdivision ; occa- 
sionally sulphate of lime, (gypsum ;) calcined clay, whose action 
upon strong and retentive lands is always beneficial ; silica in a fa- 
vorable state for assimilation ; finally, alkaline salts, chlorides, sul- 
phates, carbonates, and, perhaps, in spite of the negative given by 
chemical analysis, traces of the phosphates. 

The peat of the bogs of Sceaux, near Ch&teau-Landon, leaves 19 
per cent, of ashes, composed, according to M. Berthier, of: — 

* Oiir author might have added the fact, that the common bog iron ore of this coun- 
try is a phosphate of iron. — Kng. En. 

27 



:H4 peat ashes. 

Canstic and carbonated lime 63.0 

Clay 7.5 

Gelatinous silica 13.0 

Alumina • 7.0 

Oxide of iron 0.0 , 

Carbonate of potash 0.5 

lOO.o" 

The peat of Voitsumra, dug upon the frontiers of Bavaria and 
Bohemia, contains the remains of trees ; it leaves 1.7 per cent, of 
ashes, composed, according to M. Fikenscher, of: 

Silica 36.5 

Alumina 17.3 

O.xide of iron 33.0 

Lime : 2.0 

Magnesia 3.5 

Sul phate of lime 4.5 

Chloride of calcium 0.5 

Carbonaceous matter not incinerated 2.7 

100.0 

The brown herbaceous peat of the neighborhood of Troyes, leaves 
1 1 per cent, of residue ; it contains : 

Carbonic acid and sulphur 23.0 

Lime 23.0 

Magnesia 14.0 

Alumina and oxide of iron 14.0 

Clay and silica 26.0 

100.0 
The peat of Vassy is compact, and of a brown color ; it is mixed 
with fragments of chalk. On incineration, it leaves 7.2 of residue 
per cent., containing : 

Clay 11.0 

Carbonate of lime 51.4 

Sulphate of lime 26.0 

Oxide of iron 11.5 

100.0 

The peat of Champ-du-Feu, near Framont, (Yosges,) leaves 3 
per cent, of ashes, which consist of: 

Silica 40.0 

Alumina and oxide of iron 30.0 

Lime 30.0 

100.0 

The peat of the environs of Haguenau (Lower Rhine) produces 
12.5 per cent, of ashes, which, according to the analysis made in my 
laboratory, contain : 

Silica and sand C5.5 

' Alumina 16.2 

Lime 0.0 

Magnesia 0.0 

Oxide of iron 3.7 

Potash and soda 2.3 

Sulphuric acid 5.4 

Chlorine 0.3 

100.0 
Supposing the whole of the sulphuric acid found to have been in 



coAL-Asnr.s. 315 

combination witli lime, this peat could only have contained 4.1 per 
cent, of gypsum. 

These analyses will show that the composition of peat, or turf, is 
very various. The varying and dissimilar effects produced by turf- 
ashes, may probably be owing to this variety of composition. Turf- 
ashes, in a general way, may be used as a substitute for gypsum ; 
but this is upon the presumption that they contain lime, either in the 
state of carbonate or of sulphate. The Vassy turf-ashes, for ex- 
ample, may be employed for gypsing meadows, inasmuch as they 
contaiti a quarter of their weight of sulphate of lime. 

The ashes from pyritic turf ought not to be used without great 
circumspection ; they usually contain a quantity of iron pyrites 
which has not been destroyed in the burning, and which, exposed 
to the action of the air, gives rise to the formation of green vitriol, 
or sulphate of iron, which may prove prejudicial to vegetation. 
These ashes are generally of a red color, and very heavy, in con- 
sequence of containing a quantity of the oxide of iron. Good turf- 
ashes ought to be white and light ; the sack ought to weigh some- 
thing less than a hundred-weight. Schwertz recommends us to keep 
them from the wet ; but at Eechelbronri, where we use large quanti- 
ties of peat-ashes, we find no ill effects from leaving them exposed 
to the rain ; frequently, indeed, we moisten them with water from the 
dunghill, in order to add to their properties as a mineral manure, those 
that belong to organic manures. On the whole, however, it is cer- 
tainly better, for many reasons, to keep them dry ; they are more 
easily carried, and they are more easily spread. 

Turf-ashes of a good quality, that is to say, which include in their 
composition a large proportion of calcareous and alkaline salts, are 
adapted to crops of every description ; but it is upon clover especially 
that their influence is truly surprising. This fact is well established 
in Flanders ; but one must have employed them one's self to have any 
adequate idea of the improvement they produce. There is no risk 
of giving too large a quantity. In winter, when we have peat-ashes 
at our disposal, we give as many as 60 bushels per acre to our clo- 
vers ; we scatter them even upon the surface of the snow, and dis- 
tribute them by means of the rake in the spring. The Dutch use 
these ashes in still larger quantity, applying, at two different times, 
from 100 to IGO bushels per acre to their clover fields. Accord- 
ing to Sinclair, the Dutch also make use of an ash procured from 
a turf which during winter is in contact with brackish water, a cir- 
cumstance which renders this ash particularly rich in alkaline salts. 
It is sowed by hand, in the spring, upon clover, and the following 
year an abundant crop of wheat is obtained. The same material is 
also used in the cultivation of the hop ; and it is said that, administer- 
ed in small quantity to the roots of the vine, they preserve the plant 
from the attacks of destructive insects. 

Coal-ashes. Coal, like the two last combustible materials, is the 
product of vegetables, which, however, have undergone such a 
change as to have lost almost every trace of organization. Coal of 
different kinds contains from 1.4 to about 2.3 per cent, of ashes, and 



310 ALKALINE SALTS. 

about 2 per cent, of azote. The ash of a variety of coal of very 
excellent quality gave of — 

Argillaceous matter (silica ?) not soluble in acids 62 

Alumina .• 5 

Lime 6 

Magnesia 8 

Oxide of mancanese .T 

Oxide and sulphiiret of iron 16 

100 
Coal ash also contains very minute quantities of alkaline salts, 
which usually escape analysis when they are not especially inquired 
after. One specimen analyzed in my laboratory, gave nearly 00.1 
of alkali. Coal-ash is particularly useful on clayey soils ; it acts by 
lessening the tenacity of the soil ; and further, doubtless, by the in- 
troduction of certain useful princijjles, such as lime and alkaline salts. 

OF ALKALINE SALTS. 

It is impossible to doubt that salts having potash and soda for their 
base are useful in agriculture. The,influence of wood-ashes, and of 
paring and burning is unquestionable ; and they are so, in some con- 
siderable degree at least, in consequence of the salts of these bases 
which they supply, and which always enter into the constitution of 
vegetables. There are even certain crops which, in order to thrive, 
require a particular alkali ; the vine, for example, the fruit of which 
contains bitartrate of potash, and sorrel, which contains tlie binoxa- 
late of the same base, must needs have supplies of potash. Tiie 
plants which are grown for the production of soda, the salsola, SfC, 
from which barilla is made, must come in a soil that naturally con- 
tains a salt of soda, such as that of the sea-sliore. 

It would appear, however, that the salts of soda or potash, must 
not exceed a very small proportion in the soil. All the experiments 
that have yet been undertaken with a view to ascertain the action 
of dift'erent saline substances on growing vegetables, have led to no 
very certain conclusion but this, that they must be used very sparing- 
ly. M. Lecoq has published an account of some experiments, made 
apparently with great care, which go to prove that conamon salt, in 
the dose of from 1] to 2.' cwts. per acre, favored tlie growth of barley, 
wheat, lucern, and llax. Chloride of calcium ami sulphate of soda, 
he also found to have the same good effects. M. de Dombasle, how- 
ever, came to conclusions totally opposed to them, with reference 
especially to cominon salt, wliich, applied in the doses advised by M. 
Lecoq, was not found to produce any sensible effect. M. Puvis also 
obtained results that were equally negative. It would perhaps have 
been well had M. Lecoq begun by determining the proportion of 
alkaline salts which existed previously in the soil on which he 
conducted hi;- experiments. If he operated on a soil that was either 
destitute of tli(>se salts, or that contained them ordy in minimum 
proportion, very probably he did good by adding them. 

Nitrate of potash has been repeatedly recommended as an agent 
useful in agriculture, 'i'he conclusions that have been come to, 
however, from its use, are far from accordant. In the processes 



NITRATE OF SODA. 317 

or modes of using nitre to the soil, it is not uncommon to find it 
associated with soot, or with vegetable mould, substances which 
require no assistance of any kind to constitute them powerful 
manures, and the addition of which is therefore calculated to raise 
strong doubts of the advantageous qualities ascribed to nitre alone. 
Were the advantages of nitrate of potash much less questioned 
than they are, however, the high price of the salt would probably 
always oppose insuperable obstacles to its employment. This is 
the reason, in all likelihood that has turned the attention of Eng- 
lish agriculturists, for several years past, to nitrate of soda, a salt 
that is imported in quantity from Peru, and of which the price 
per cwt. may be about forty shillings ; a price which, were it found 
really useful, would permit of its being used. Admitting the ac- 
curacy of the experiments that have been made, indeed, we can- 
not doubt the efficacy of nitrate of soda on soil already furnished 
with organic manure. The quantity that has been recommended 
is about one cwt. per acre. 

Mr. Barclay made a few experftnents after having heard much of 
the nitrate of soda from his neighbors, of the results of which the 
following examples will suffice to give a comparative estimate : 

Without nitrate. With nitrate. Difference in favor of 

the nitrates. 

Wheat 31 bush. 2 pecks. 35 bush. 3 pecks. 5 bush. 3 pecks. 

Straw 21 cwt. qrs. 19 lbs. 23 cwt. 2 qrs. 26 lbs. 3 cwt. 2 qrs. 7 lbs. 

The produce of the land treated with nitrate, however, did not 
fetch so high a price at market as that grown without it ; and every 
item of expense taken into the reckoning, the use of the nitrate was 
attended with no commercial benefit. IStill this does not militate 
against the fact, that the production of vegetable matter was in- 
creased upon land treated with the nitrate of soda. And indeed 
much of the information which M. de Gourcy collected in England, 
is of a kind that tends to confirm the favorable influence of this salt 
on vegetation. Wheat, clover, and Swedish turnips are particular- 
ly specified as benefiting from its use. These facts admitted, we 
rnay ask : how does the nitrate of soda act ! The chemical consti- 
tution of the nitrates is such, that we might conceive their acting at 
once as mineral and as organic manures. The important point for 
solution was to ascertain whether the azote of the nitrate contribu- 
ted in any way to the formation of the azotized principles of plants. 
Davy, in taking with much distrust the report of Sir Kenelm Digby's 
experiments on the influence of nitre in the cultivation of barley, 
shows no disinclination to believe that the azote of the salt may 
concur in the production of albumen and gluten.* This, however, 
is a point in physiology which may be put to the proof by experi- 
ment, and seems peculiarly worthy of being tested in this way. I 
have admitted it as extremely probable, that the azote of the azoti- 
zed principles of plants has its source either in the ammonia, which 
is the special ultimate product of the organic manure we employ, or 

* Agricultiu-al Clieniistry. 
27* 



318 MANUKE GVl'SUM. 

in the azote of the atmosphere, or in both simultaneously ; but the 
opinion which should niaintaiii that the ammonia derived from the 
organic constituents of the soil, passes into the state of nitric acid 
before penetrating the tissui^s of plants, would find support nearly in 
the same facts which I have quoted as favoring the former view. 
We have seen, moreover, in our general considerations on nitrifica- 
tion, with what facility the azote of ammonia undergoes acidification 
in certain circumstances, a fact from wliicli an argument of much 
potency for the nitric acid theory naturally flows. I shall here add 
an observation to which I have, up to this time perhaps, attaclied 
too little importance. When M. Rivero and I examined the highly 
irritating and poisonous milky sap of the hura crepitans., we had oc- 
casion to leave a considerable quantity of the water derived from 
the sap, after separating the caseum, to itself; by tlie spontaneous 
evaporation of this water, we collected really a considerable quanti- 
ty of nitrate of potash. Since this time I have had occasion to 
note the same salt in the sap of several trees of the tropics. In the 
leaves and fruit, however, I have rfever found more than very minute 
quantities. 

Gypsum, sulphate of lime, or plaster of Paris, is a compound of 
41.5 lime with 58.5 sulpiiuric acid; gypsum generally contains a 
quantity of constitutional water, in which case it consists of 79.2 
sulphate of lime, and 20.8 water = 100. This hydrate of sulphate 
of lime is one of the abundant minerals on the surface of the earth ; 
it is met with in the crystalline state, and in granular and fibrous 
masses in the strata of most recent formation. It has no sensible 
taste, but is slightly soluble in water, this fluid dissolving ^g^ of its 
weight of the salt. E.xposed for some time to a white heat, it loses 
its water of constitution, and passes into the state in which when 
ground it is known under the name of plaster of Paris. 

Gypsum is one of the most commonly employed of the mineral 
manures. Its virtues appear not to have been unknown to the an- 
cients : but until lately its employment was limited to a few circum- 
scribed districts. It was only about the middle of the eighteenth 
century that the protestant pastor, Mayer, took up the study of gyp- 
sum in the principality of llohenlohe, proceeding upon certain in- 
formation which be had obtained from Hcblen of Hanover, in the 
neighborhood of which, it was employed as an improver. 

By extending a knowledge of the virtues of gypsum, both by his 
example and his writings, Mayer did great service to agriculture. 
Experiments were soon instituted in all quarters. Tschiffeli in 
Switzerland, Schubart in Germany, and Franklin in America, wrote 
on its elTects, or practically demonstrated them to the satisfaction of 
all. But it appears to be the fate of all useful discoveries, of all 
happy aj)plications of princijiles. to be opposed at first, and only to be 
admitted after having been vainly disputed. The use of gypsum 
soon aroused formidable op])osition ; and there is a curious episode 
in the liistory of the paper war that was long carried on upon the 
subject, which I think worth noting. Among the most strenuous 
enemies of the use of gypsum, were the proprietors of the salt-pans. 



GYPSUM. 319 

They declared that gypsum was not only incompetent to replace 
schlot or the refuse of their pans, as had been proposed, but that it 
was injurious ; schlot was the only real improver, the stimulant of 
stimulants, for which there was no substitute. But it turned out by 
and by, that the schlot of the salt-pan was found to be neither more 
nor less than sulphate of lime, than gypsum — the article that was 
not only inefficient, but injurious. These gentlemen were afraid 
that the use of gypsum extending, they would want a market for 
their refuse. 

The use of gypsum once introduced, extended rapidly in France, 
particularly around Paris, whence it crossed the Atlantic, and the 
fields of North America were actually manured with the produce of 
the quarries of Montmartre. The lately cleared lands of America 
abound in humus, and the plants indigenous there were most bene- 
ficiall}' acted on by gypsum, which really produced remarkable 
effects ; in both the new and the old world, its power, as one of the 
most useful auxiliaries of vegetation, soon appeared to be estab- 
lished. 

We must not blind ourselves to the fact, however, that the parti- 
sans of gypsum were guilty of exaggeration. They spoke of the 
substance as a universal manure, capable of supplying the place of 
every other, as advantageous for every description of crop, as appli- 
cable to every variety of soil. Experience soon set bounds to such 
indiscriminate laudation ; it was found that gypsum alone was inad- 
equate to produce fertility, that it always required the concurrence 
of organic manures, if the soil did not contain them of itself; that 
it only acted beneficially on a certain, and that a very small number 
of plants ; lastly, that it was upon artificial meadows, constituted by 
clover, lucern, and sainfoin, that it produced its best effects ; its 
action, on the contrary, being scarcely perceptible upon natural mead- 
ows, doubtful in connection with hoed crops, and null with the cereals. 
These negative results cannot be called in question ; they were come 
to by parties who were every way interested in having the decision 
otherwise. 

The best season for spreading gypsum is the spring, and when the 
clover, sainfoin, or lucern, has already made a certain degree of 
progress ; calm and moist weather is the best for laying it on. 
Opinion was long divided as to whether it should be applied in its 
natural state, and simply ground, or first burned and then ground. 
But it is now generally admitted that burning adds nothing to the 
qualities of gypsum. Although the usual practice is to sow or pow- 
der the meadows with the ground gypsum, it is still acknowledged 
that good effects are obtained from incorporating the substance with 
the soil. The advantage of the practice of scattering it on in pow- 
der, so as to adhere to the wet leaves of the growing plants, I find 
explained in the equality of distribution which is by this means 
eflTected. 

In some places, the number and extent of which are by no means 
inconsiderable, no good effect whatever has attended the application 
of gypsum, although it has been administered in favorable conditions, 



320 GYFSUM. 

and in connection with crops that elsewhere derive the highest amount 
of advantage from its use. This anomaly has been explained by 
assuming, without proving experimentally, however, that the fact is 
so, that the soil in these districts naturally contains a sufficient dose 
of gypsum. It has also been said that gypsum produces no effect on 
low-lying and damp soils. 

The quantity of gypsum employed in different places, varies great- 
ly : from 1^ to 16 cwts. per acre have been recommended. The 
quality of the article employed has a great influence on this question, 
to say nothing of the price, which in many places is high. 

The opinions of practical men, with regard to the advantages and 
propriety of applying gypsum, although they agreed in certain de- 
terminate circumstances, were still far from being unanimous upon 
every point. A particular inquiry into the subject was therefore 
held worthy of its attention by the French government, and a com- 
prehensive report on all the information collected, was made by M. 
Bosc to the Royal Central Agricultural Society of France. This 
report shows in a striking manner the advantage that may be deriv- 
ed from the lights of practical men ; in a single line or sentence we 
frequently find a summary of twenty or thirty years of experience. 
It is, however, indispensable to go to these gentlemen for their in- 
formation ; the agriculturists who devote themselves to cultivation, 
it is notorious, write very little, and those who spend very little 
time in this way, on the contrary, write a great deal. It may be 
that the reason for the silence of the one, is that also for the elo- 
quence of the other. 

The following series of questions and answers I believe to em- 
brace most of the points connected with the employment of gypsum, 
that are of interest. 

1st. Does plaster act favorably on artificial meadows] Of 43 
opinions given, 40 are in the affirmative ; 3 in the negative. 

2d. Does it act favorably on artificial meadows, the soil of which 
is very damp ? Unanimously, no. Ten opinions given. 

3d. Will it supply the place of organic manure, or of vegetable 
mould ? i. c. will a barren soil be converted into a fertile one by the 
use of plaster ! No, unanimously. Seven opinion^ given. 

4th. Does gypsing sensibly increase the crops of the cereals] Of 
32 opinions, 30 negative, 2 affirmative. 

The information thus obtained, valuable as it is, cannot yet he held 
to embrace every thing that seems desirable. Happily, all that was 
wanting has been supplied by the individual inquiries of Mr. Smith 
in England, and of M. de Yillele in France. 

The soil upon which Mr. Smith made his experiments was light, 
with a substrate of chalk ; the vegetable earth was a yard in depth 
at the top of the field, and lessened gradually, in such a way that at 
bottom it was but three inches thick. FiVcry precaution was taken 
that the respective breadths contrasted should be as nearly as possi- 
ble in the same circumstances. The following table shows the 
results : 



r.ypsuM. 



321 



GROWTH OF SAINFOIN UPON SOILS GYPSED AND UNGYPSED IN 

1792, 1793, AND 1794. 



E.B 
1 

2 

3 

1 
4 


Remarks. 


Dry 

herb 

per acre. 


Seed per 
acre. 


Weight 

of total 

crop. 


Proportion of 

stalk to 

seed. 


Crop on the deeper ungypsed 
soil 

Crop upon the contiguous breadth, 
wliicli had received about 15 
bushels of gypsum in April, 
1194 

Difference in favor of the gypsed 
breadth . . . . 

Crop upon the same soil, of less 
depth, and not gypsed . 

Crop on contiguous soil, dressed 
with about 15 bushels of gyp- 
sum in April, 1792 . 

Difference in favor of the gypsed 
breadth . . . . . 

Crop on the same soil, 3 inches 
deep, and not gypsed 

Crop on contiguous soil, dressed 
with about 15 bushels of gyp- 
sum, ITtii May, 1794 . 

Difference in favor of the gyp- 
sed piece . , . . 

Crop on the contiguous soil of 
experiment. No. 3, gj'psed 
with the same dose in May, 
1792 

Difference in favor of the crop 
gypsed twice, at an interval of 
two years . . . . 


lbs. 
3357 

5462 


lb.3. 
419 

582 


lbs. 
3776 

6044 


100:12.5 
100:10.7 

100:8.9 
100 : 8.7 

100:3.2 
100 : 4.3 

100 : 4.8 


2105 
2766 

4381 


163 
245 

379 


2268 
3011 

4760 


1615 

2068 

4879 


134 
66 

211 


1749 
2134 

5090 


2811 
4310 


145 
205 


2956 
4515 


2242 


139 


2381 



322 



GYPSUM. 



These results show to what extent gypsum is favorable to the 
production of sainfoin. The crop from tiie unpla.stered breadth be- 
ing taken as 100, that upon llie j)histered breadtli is 231 ; it is more 
than doubled. The influence of gypsum was also found by Smith 
to extend to grain ; assuming the grain crops on the ungypsed land 
at 100, those on the gypsed soil were 192 ; they were nearly doubled. 

On comparing the weight of the herbaceous portion of the sain- 
foin to that of the seed produced, widely different relations are ap- 
parent. These Mr. Smith attributed to the different depths of the 
vegetable soil in different parts of the field. In the first experiment, 
where the relative proportion of seed is highest, the arable soil was 
three feet in thickness ; the other crops were taken from parts where 
the depth of vegetable mould was considerably less. Thus the 
gypsed soil produced at the rate per acre : 

cwls. qrs. lbs. 

In the first experiment of 5 2-2 the depth of soil being 3 feet. 
In the second e.xperiinent of 3 1 15 " " 18 inches. 

In the third experiment of 1 3 15 " "3 inches. 

With this interesting fact before him, Mr. Smith imagined that 
soils of little depth wanted some principle essential to fructification, 
which gypsum, in spite of the untjuestionable assistance it gives, is 
yet incompetent to supply. This principle is in all probability or- 
ganic matter, which is naturally moie abundant in the layer of true 
vegetable mould which is deepest. 

]\Ir. Smith's observations on white clover were quite as decisive 
in favor of gypsum as those on sainfoin, and are confirmatory of the 
conclusions of the generality of farmers on the subject. The gyp- 
sum in connection with this crop was applied in the dose of bush- 
els per acre, on the 22d of Ma)\ a date at which the clover looked 
pale, and seemed to want sap. A fortnight afterwards, the effects 
of the gypsum were obvious; although no rain had fallen in the in- 
terval, the clover had become vigorous, and soon formed a covering 
thick enough to protect the ground from the scorching rays of the 
sun, which burned up uU the parts which had not been gypsed. 



COMPARATIVE GROWTHS OK WHITE CLOVER, GYPSED AND UNGYPSED, 
BY MR. SMITH. 



EXPERIMENTS. 


Herb or 

stalk per 

acre. 


Seed 
per acre. 


Total 
weight of 
Ihe crop. 


Proportion 

of herb to 

seed. 


A. Gypscd .... 

A. Not gypsed . . . 

Difierence . . . 

B. Gypsed .... 
B. Not gypscd . . . 

Difference .... 


lbs. 

2226 

839 


lbs. 

316 

56 


lbs. 
2542 

895 


100: 14.3 
100: 6.7 

100: 7.6 
100 : 7.0 


1387 

2270 
500 


260 

174 
61 


1647 

2444 
561 


1770 1 113 


1883 



323 



The mean of these two experiments shows that the crop of white 
clover on the ungypsed land being 100, that on the gypsed is 225 — 
twice and a quarter more. 

The experiments of M. de Villele may be viewed as supplemen- 
tary or complementary to those of Mr. Smith. They were per- 
formed in the south of France, in accordance with the routine that 
is generally followed, viz : clover-hay, or sainfoin, previous to grain, 
upon soils of considerably different nature, and with doses of gyp- 
sum that varied from 8 to 3 on the same extent of surface. His 
conclusions or crops are stated in the following table : 





"o * 










Kxccss of 0) ° '^S 


la 


KIND OF 






Gyp- 
sum 


Dry crop 
on the 


Dry crop 
on mea- 


the crop 3 S ^ ~ "3^ 
gypsed g S 2= "o E ? 




SOIL. 


E'C 


Crop. 


per 


gypsed 


dow not 


over the ^.y-E^go 


^-^3 




^o. 




acre. 


ground 


gypsed. 


crop not 


c ^ 


S&o 


-So"" 




Zk 






per acre. 


per acre. 


gypsed. 


ox 


"m 






o 








cwt.qr.lbs. 


cwt.qr.lbs. 


s-' 


.. d. 


s. d. 


Light, dry, ex- ' 
posed to the 






cwt.qr. 


cwt.qr.lhs. 


s. d. 


1 


Sainfoin 


6 3 


28 2 6 


18 1 


10 2 15 


17 7 


6 9 


10 10 


south, 6 to 9 


2 


Sainfoin 


2 2 


32 2 27 


16 1 13 


16 1 13 


27 1 


14 


25 


inches deep, 


3 


Sainfoin 


4 4 


27 1 


17 21 


19 3 8 


16 3 


5 1 


11 2 


and on chalk.. 




















Stony clayey. 




















moist, about 


1 


Clover 


4 


40 3 19 


20 1 23 


20 1 23 


33 10 


3 2 


2 3 


l(j inch, deep 


2 


Clover 


5 3 


32 2 27 


19 2 16 


13 U 


21 8 


12 5 


14 2 


on a stiti'clay. J 












1 







The unquestionable fact of a mineral salt stimulating the growth 
of certain plants in so remarkable a manner as to double and even 
to triple the usual quantities grown per acre, naturally aroused the 
curiosity of mankind to inquire into and endeavor to discover the 
cause Explanations in abundance have been proposed ; but so lit- 
tle satisfactory in general, that I do not think myself bound to men- 
tion them all. I shall limit myself, indeed, to two ; one proposed 
by Davy some time ago, and one advocated by Liebig very lately. 

Davy assumes that the plants of artificial meadows simply absorb 
sulphate of lime. He assures us that he had found a large propor- 
tion of this salt in the ashes of vegetables grown in soil which had 
been treated with turf ashes abounding in the substance. He be- 
lieved that the gypsum entered particularly into the constitution of 
the woody fibre. And it is not uninteresting to observe, that tlie 
j)lants which gypsum certainly favors in the highest degree, are of 
very rapid growth ; and that in all probability they would find it 
difficult to obtain the whole of the sulphate of lime they require from 
ordinary or ungypsed soils within the period of their growth. Let 
it not be forgotten, however, that if it be true that saline substances 
are indispensable to the organization of plants, it is also true that 
these substances can only be absorbed within certain limits ; a salt 
the best calculated by its nature to aid vegetation, would become in- 
jurious by its excessive proportion, did the water which moistened 
the general soil contain too large a proportion of it in solution : if a 
plant languishes when it has not enough of one or other of its natu- 
ral saline constituents, it also dies when furnished with the same 
substance in excess. 



324 (a-PSLT.r. 

Let us now remember that salts can only act on vegetables in the 
state of solution, and we shall understand how those only which are 
but sparingly soIuIjIc, can ever be advantageously employed in agri- 
culture. Water, in fact, having the power to dissolve only a very 
limited quantity of the mineral manure, will present it to the grow- 
ing plant nearly in a constant quantity, so long as the soil contains 
any fair proportion of the substance. It is in this way precisely 
that gypsum appears to gain its superiority over the generality of 
mineral or saline manures ; water does not take up more than j^^jth 
part of its weight before it becomes saturated ; a certain proportion 
of the moisture of the earth being dissipated by evaporation, there 
is forthwith a precipitation of sulphate of lime ; but the moisture 
that remains is nevertheless charged as before, neither more nor less, 
and in the fittest state, as it seems, to administer to the wants of the 
growing plant. If instead of sulphate of lime we suppose some salt 
that is much more soluble, sulphate of soda for example, we have 
nothing of the same state of equilibrium between the quantity of 
moisture and its charge of saline ingredients maintained. Suppos- 
ing the moisture of the ground to hold j^^th of sulphate of soda in 
solution, and this quantity calculated to produce good effects upon 
growing vegetables ; suppose now that a drought sets in, which by 
dissipating one-half of tlie moisture, increases the charge of saline 
matter to 5 'jth of its bulk, it may very well happen that this pro- 
portion, instead of proving beneficial, will be felt as injurious to vege- 
tation. 

The hypothesis of Davy, supported by these ingenious views of 
M. Chaptal, would therefore lead us to regard gypsum as beliaving 
to plants in the same general way as the insoluble salts which usual- 
ly form an element of the soil or of manures, the phospliate and car- 
bonate of lime, in particular, salts which are made apt to enter the 
tissues of plants by the carbonic acid which is found in all the water 
that falls from the clouds and that moistens the soil, and which has 
the property of dissolving small quantities of them. But v.'hile the 
strength of these solutions, weak at all times, is liable through at- 
mospherical vicissitudes to vary, when the mere traces of saline 
matter which at best they offer at anj' time are inadequate to meet 
the demands of a crop disposed to grow rapidly and luxuriantly, 
such as clover, sainfoin, and lucern, the solution of sulphate of lime, 
of the same strength at all times and under all circumstances, is 
ready to supply the plants with the mineral substance they require, 
however rapid and vigorous their growth. 

The theory of the action of gypsuin proposed by Professor Liebig 
is extremely ingenious. lie adnuts, with M. de Saussurc, the pre- 
sence of carbonate of ammonia in the atmosphere, and consequently 
in rain-water. This fact established, and it appears undeniable, the 
inlluence of gypsum would consi.sL in its. faculty of fixing the infinite- 
ly small quantity of carbonate of ammonia which is brought down 
by the rain and the dew, and so preventing its dissipation on the 
return of drought and sunshine. Carbonate of ammonia, in fact, as 
wc have already seen, when speaking of manures, in contact with 



GYPSUM. 325 

the sulphate of lime decomposes this salt, carbonate of lime and 
sulphate of ammonia being formed. I shall by and by inquire 
whether the reaction that takes place is of the precise nature of that 
here stated ; but admitting, for the present, that it is, it would still 
be competent for us to ask if the quantity of ammonia condensed in 
this way was likely to suffice for the production of such decided ef- 
fects as we frequently witness in connection with the crops that are 
assisted by gypsum. 

Professor Liebig observes that a pound of sulphate of lime once 
converted into sulphate of ammonia, would introduce into the soil a 
quantity of ammonia equivalent to that which would be afforded it 
by 6.250 lbs. of horse's urine ; a showing upon which it would be 
easy to demonstrate, taking the composition of sainfoin to be as I 
have shown it, that a pound of plaster fertilizing the ground to this 
extent, would be adequate to increase one hundred-fold the quantity 
of dry fodder produced. 

According to my manner of viewing this question, it must be ex- 
amined on a totally different basis. It is certain, for instance, that 
gypsum has no effect upon natural meadows ; positive experience 
has satisfied mo of the absolute inutility of the substance here ; so 
that upon my natural meadows at Bechelbronn, I now^ never employ 
a particle of it. But let us review Professor Liebig's theory in con- 
nection with tlie production of sainfoin and clover, which in a gene- 
ral way derive an advantage from gypsum, which no one disputes. 

Our harvest of clover, taken as dry, amounts on an average from 
strongly gypsed land, to 2 tons 1 cwt. very nearly per acre ; and 
this quantity agrees pretty well with that which appears common in 
Germany. It is generally allowed that by gypsing we double the 
produce. It would follow from this, that an acre which had not 
been gypsed, would yield no more than 20^ cvvts. of dry clover ; in 
my opinion the reduction Vvfould be still greater. Dry clover hay, 
made from the plant cut when in flower, contains about 2 per cent, 
of azote. The 20^ cwts. of forage gained by the intervention of the 
gypsum would consequently contain 110 lbs. of ammonia, equivalent 
to 134.2 lbs. carbonate of ammonia. This consequently is the quan- 
tity of carbonate of ammonia which the gypsum ought to have been 
the means of procuring from the rain which falls upon an acre of 
land during the time that clover is upon the ground, in order to fur- 
nish the azote contained in the increased quantity of the crop. 

Now in Alsace, from the time of gypsing in x'\prii, to the time of 
mowing in July, there falls on an average 3.92, nearly 4 inches of 
rain, which would amount in round numbers to 982 tons per acre. 
Were the azote of what may be spoken of as the surplus produce, 
derived from the rain in fact, all the water that falls ought to contain 
Tfwoo of its weight of carbonate of ammonia. It is very question- 
able, however, whether any such proportion of ammoniacal salts 
exist in rain-water ; yet the proportion ought to be very much great- 
er, inasmuch as we have supposed the whole of the rain that fell to 
penetrate the ground, none of it to run off; but the truth is, that a 
very considerable proportion of the rain that falls never sinks into 

28 



326 GvrsuM. 

the soil ; once the surface is thoroughly soaked, much that falls 
drains off, passes away by the ditches, and is lost with all it may 
contain that would prove beneficial to vegetation. It is in fact alto- 
gether impossible to make any approximation, even of the roughest 
kind, in regard to the quantity of rain-water that soaks into and that 
runs off the ground ; and thus no kind of estimate can be formed of 
the relation between the moisture absorbed by plants, and that which 
escapes direct by the evaporation, without passing through them at all. 
But even in admitting that it was really the ammonia contained 
in the rain-water, to which the very considerable increase of the 
crop of clover, lucern, and sainfoin was owing, it would still be left 
for us to explain wherefore, meteorological and other circumstances 
remaining the same, the same relative effects were not produced 
upon natural meadows covered with grasses, upon hoed crops, such 
as beet and turnips, and upon wheat ; finally, the most serious ob- 
jection that can be urged against this theory is founded upon the 
fact, that gypsum has no truly beneficial effect upon artificial mea- 
dows, save and except when the soil to which it is applied contains 
an adequate proportion of azotized organic manure. In a moderate- 
ly manured soil, gypsum, as all the world knows, produces no sen- 
sible improvement ; and as M. Crud, one of those men whom long 
experience has placed at the head of practical farming, said : It is 
to throw away both money and trouble to put gypsum upon an un- 
kindly and impoverished bottom. It would seem, however, that if 
gypsum really fixes ammonia in the soil, in consequence of its action 
upon the rain-water that falls, converting its carbonate into sulphate 
ol ammonia, the ammoniacal salt once introduced into the soil, ought 
to act independently and without the concurrence of another manure. 
That it really does act isolatedly, and of its own proper force when 
it exists, has been proved by the experiments of M. .Schattenmann, 
who demonstrated on the large scale the beneficial effects of the 
sulphate of ammonia directly applied to natural meadows. It is 
obvious, that if the theory which I discuss be true, the greater num- 
ber of j)ractical observations which I have quoted must necessarily 
be false ; or, on the contrary, these observations being accurate, the 
theory must be erroneous. 

I have given reasons for maintaining the accuracy of the practical 
results ; nevertheless, the better to establish this conviction, I have 
thought it advisable to add a i'cw facts to the many tiiat are already 
extant. I was, therefore, induced to undertake a series of experi- 
ments with a view to study, independently of all hypothetical idea, 
the action of gypsum upon certain hoed crops and cereals. 

These experiments were made upon patches of land of 110 square 
yards each. Every precaution was taken to render the experiments 
strictly comparable one with another. Thus the ground appropri- 
ated to each particular crop was divided into three equal contiguous 
zones. The first zone. A, always received gypsum in the ratio of 
4| bushels per acre. The second zone, B, and the third zone, C, 
were not gypsed. Each zone was sowed with the same quantity of 
seed, or planted w'ith an equal number of beet plants or potatoes. 



MANUKE GYPSUM. 327 

A and C were the surfaces which I proposed to myself to contrast ; 
the intermediate zone, B, was a kind of neutral ground employed 
merely to prevent the immediate contact of the g-ypsed with the un- 
gypsed zone. I may here remark, that it would be well always to 
take such a precaution in making experiments on the effects of dif- 
ferent manures. 

In 1812 I tried the effect of gypsum upon wheat coming after three 
different crops. 1st. After clover ploughed in. 2d. After beet- 
root. 3d. After potatoes. 

The gypsum was applied the 19th of May, at which time the 
wheat looked extremely well. The crop was cut between the 21st 
and 26th of July, and the following are the results obtained : 

Qrons Weiefht of grain, corn, and straw. 

'^ * A. piece g*ypseJ. B, not g-ypseU. C not gypsed. 

Wheat after clover 319 lbs. 323 lbs. 307 lb?. 

Wheat after mangel-wurzel 195 " 176 " 158 " 

Wheat after potatoes 233 •' 158 " 2G4 " 

Average of the three experiments 250 " 248 " 250 " 

The year 1842 having been unfavorable to wheat in consequence 
of the long drought, the experiment required to be repeated. This 
was done in 1843 ; and it must be allowed, that an experiment could 
scarcely be conducted under circumstances of weather more favora- 
ble to the cultivation of grain ; the results here are given for equal 
spaces of three French acres, equal to 385 square yards. The gyp- 
sed zones had been treated with 70 lbs. of sulphate of lime each : 

Year 1843. Sheaves. Grain. Straw, chaff, and waste, 

lbs. lbs. lbs. 

Rye with e^psum 516 137 379 

Kyewithout 472 127 345 

Wheat with gypsum 462 147 315 

Wheat without 510 1.56 254 

Wheat without 453 143 310 

Oats with g>-psuni 329 112 217 

Oats without... 368 113 255 

From these numbers it is obvious that gypsum produces no appreci- 
able effect upon wheat, oats, and rye, conclusions that agree with 
those come to in the previous year. 

EXPERI.MENT WITH FIELD-BEET OR MANGEL-WURZEL, OPENING THE 
ROTATION WITH MANURED SOIL, 1842. 

The plants were transplanted and watered, and the gypsum was 
applied at the time of earthing up ; a good deal of rain fell, and 
shortly after having been laid on, the gypsum had become incorpo- 
rated with the ground. The crop was gathered on the 8th of Octo- 
ber, three months after the gypsing, and from two equal surfaces, 
each of 242 square yards in extent, weighed as follows : 

From the gypsed grounil 13 cwt. 2 qrs. 6 lbs. 

From the ungypsed 12 " 2 " 3 " 

The gypsum would therefore appear to have had no beneficial 
effect ; for the difference in favor of the gypsed piece is so trifling 



328 GYPSUM. 

that it cannot be reasonably ascribed to the mineral manure : in fact, 
the quantity obtained from the gypsed surface does not exceed that 
which we constantly take from fields in the ordinary course of cul- 
tivation, and which have received no gypsum. 

The action of gypsum, limited as it is to certain crops, will not 
allow us to admit that it produces its effect by fixing in the ground 
the carbonate of ammonia contained in rain-water ; were it connect- 
ed with any fixation of ammonia, it would be manifested generally, 
and not in particular instances only. Davy's theory therefore ap- 
pears the more plausible, and requires discussion. Did the ashes of 
the clover grown in gypsed soils actually contain a large proportion 
of sulphate of lime, as affirmed by the illustrious English chemist, 
the action of gypsum would be readily understood. The whole 
question, therefore, seems to turn upon the composition of the ashes. 

I have analyzed the ashes of clover grown at Bechelbronn, with- 
out and with the concurrence of gypsum. I shall here give the 
conclusions come to in 1841, a year remarkable for the heavy crops 
of clover, and those also for the year 1842, when the clover crop 
was but indifferent. The fir.st table contains the results in the order 
in which they were registered ; the second contains those obtained 
after the deduction of the carbonic acid and carbon w hich had re- 
mained in the ashes examined : 



Carbonic acid 

Chlorine 

Phosphoric acid 

Sulphuric sicid 

Lime 

Magnesia 

Oxide of iron, manganese ; 

alumina 

Potash 

Soda 

Silica 

Loss and charcoal 



Extraordinary Crop of I8-11. 



Ashes of Clover. 



Ung-ypsed. 



14.2 
3.4 
8.0 
3.2 

23.7 
6.3 

I.O 
19.6 

1.0 
16.8 

2.8 

100.0 



Gypsed. 



22.1 
2.9 
6.9 
2.6 

22.4 
5.1 

0.6 
27.8 
0.7 
7.9 
1.0 



Unfavorable Crop of IS43. 



ypsed. 



21.5 
2.5 
5.4 
2.4 

25.4 
5.6 

0.5 
22.5 
2.2 

io!o 

2.0 



100.0 



100.0 



Gypsed. 



26.8 
2.2 
5S 
2.3 

20.7 
7.4 

traces. 
25.3 
0.2 
2.7 
0.6 



100.0 



Carbonic acid and Loss deducted : 



Chlorine 

Phosphoric acid 

t^ulphuric acid 

Lime 

Magnesia 

O.xide of iron, manganese ; 

alumina 

Potash 

Soda 

Silica 



4.1 
9.7 
3.9 
28.5 
7.6 

1.2 

23.6 

1.2 

20.2 

100.0 



3.8 
9.0 
3.4 

29.4 
6.7 

1.0 
35.4 

0.9 
10.4 

100.0 



3.3 
7.1 
3.1 
33.2 
7.3 

0.6 
29.4 

2.9 
13.1 

100.0 



3.2 

36.7 
10.2 

traces. 

34.7 

0.3 

3.7 

100.0 



GVFSUM. 329 

The analyses here do not, indicate the modes in which the various 
substances found were combined in the ashes ; but supposing that 
the whole of the sulphuric acid existed in combination with lime, 
which it most probably did, the preceding results would meet us in 
the following shape : the ashes of the clover grown upon soil with- 
out gypsum contain 6.0 per cent, of sulphate of lime ; those of clover 
grown upon a soil with gypsum, 5.7 per cent. 

As it is impossible to answer for so small a difference as S^^'jo 
parts in researches of this kind, we must presume that the two ashes 
contained the same proportions of sulphate of lime. 

Here, however, as in all other agricultural questions, isolated 
analyses throw but little light on the subject of inquiry. In order 
that they may enable us to arrive at any definite conclusion, two 
new elements must be taken into the discussion ; 1st. The propor- 
tion of ash furnished by a given weight of the forage gathered ; 2d. 
The quantity of forage yielded by a given surface before and after 
the use of gypsum. 

I have taken from my own observations the quantity of dry forage 
yielded by the two cuttings of 2d year's clover after gypsum, as 
amounting to 41 cwt. per acre. The same surface in the 1st year, 
and before the use. of gypsum, would have produced but 9 cwt. 100 
of dry clover gave : 

Ashes freed from 
Vear. Ashes. carbonic acid Per acre, 

per cent. 

Clover ungypsed 1841 12.0 10.3 103 lbs. 

Idem 1842 11.2 8.8 89 " 

Clover gypsed 1841 7.0 5.4 248 " 

Idem 1842 7.7 5.6 257 " 

MINERAL SUBSTANCES IN THE CROP FROM 2A ACRES. 



Year 1841. 

Fallow ungj'psed 
Ditto gypsed 

Year 1842. 

Fallow ungypsed 
Fallow gypsed ... 



10.1 
22.6 



6.6 

18.4 











^r^ 








S 


a 


2 




CC 


H 








*S 










c 5 


X 






■a c 






































t 


a. 


J 






(2 


ai 


oS 




J3 








■c c 










Pl.< 


m 






o " 








< 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


24.2 


9.6 


70.8 


18.9 


3.0 


.58.7 


3.0 


48.9 


248 


53.2 


20.2 


174.6 


39.8 


5.9 


210.3 


5.2 


61.8 


594 


15.4 


6.6 


70.8 


15. G 


1.3 


62.9 


6.1 


27.9 


234 


50.3 


19.8 


226.1 


62.7 


— 


213.8 


1.7 


22.8 


016 



It is therefore obvious, that in the course of the three months 
which followed the application of the gypsum, the soil must have 
supplied the plant with very considerable quantities of mineral sub- 
stance ; the crops taken from the gypsed soils contained in fact two 

28* 





Chlorine. 


1841 


2.2 


184-2 


2.8 



330 uvi'suw. 

or even three times the quantity of these substances which those 
grown previously to the gypsing contained. Representing, for ex- 
ample, by unity the quantity of the several bases and acids of the 
crop grown without gypsum, we should have the quantities of the 
same principles contained in the crops produced upon the gypsed 
soils represented by the following numbers : 

Phosphoric Sulphuric Maflfneeia and Potash and 

acid. acid. Lime. metallic oxide. soda. Silica. 

2.2 2.1 2.5 2.1 3.5 1.0 

3.3 3.1 3.1 3.7 3.2 1.0 

Silica appears to form the only exception here, which would lead 
us to conclude that this earth was only absorbed by clover in the first 
period of its growth. Potash and lime are the bases which enter in 
largest proportion into the mineral constitution of clover ; and there 
is another fact made evident which deserves particularly to fix at- 
tention : it is that the lime assimilated subsequently to the gypsing, 
bears no kind of relation to the quantity of sulphuric acid fixed dur- 
ing the same space of time. The excess of acid and of lime obtain- 
ed from the ash of the gypsed clover over that of the ungypsed, is 
for : 

1841, Sulphuric acid 4-8 Lime 47.2 

1842, " 6.0 " 70.6 

Supposing further, that the sulphuric acid assimilated subsequently 
to the gypsing was taken up in the state of sulphate of lime, we find 
that: 

In 1841 the gj'psed crop absorbed 18 lbs. of this salt. 
In 1842 " 22 lbs. 

These quantities are so small as to lead us to suppose that the 
utility of gypsing consists in furnishing the plant with the large pro- 
portion of lime which it seems to require. Gypsing would then be 
equivalent to the application of lime ; and in fact, according to 
Schwertz, Paris plaster is replaced in Flanders by slaked lime, by 
the lye-washed ashes of wood, and by peat-ash, with decided advan- 
tage.* Some peat-ash contains sulphate of lime, others none at all. 
What is employed successfully, most likely presents sulphuric acid 
in the state of an alkaline sulphate. 

Wood-ash, which is certainly the best manure for artificial mead- 
ows, may contain uj)on an average one per cent, of sulphuric acid, 
and when lye-washed, the proportion ought to be much less ; if per- 
fectly washed, it ought to be null ; at all events, there is no sulphate 
of lime present to fix the ammonia of the rain-water. Independently 
of earthy phosphates, so useful to all plants, lye-washed ashes fre- 
quently yield more than 80 per cent, of chalk. We thus perceive, 
in a general way, that the manures which stimulate the vegetation 
of clover are always calcareous, the lime being either in the state 
of sulphate or carbonate, which exists abundantly in the crops, com- 
bined with organic acids, and freed consequently of nearly the whole 
of the inorganic acid with which it was originally associated. As- 
suming that gypsum acts like chalk, it may be conceived that when 

* Schwertz, Culture des Flantes fourrageres, p. 72. 



GYPSUM. 331 

the former is incorporated with the indispensable manure, it is de- 
composed, and carbonate of lime, in a state of minute division, and 
for that reason easily absorbed, is the result. It is only upon this 
supposition that I can understand the elimination of the sulphuric 
acid of the gypsum ; for if the lime really entered the vegetable in 
the state of sulphate, the ashes ought to be much richer in that acid 
than analysis shows. This same difficulty occurs in the hypothesis 
of Liebig. If the 56 lbs. of ammonia derived from the atmosphere 
penetrated the plant in the form of sulphate, there must enter at the 
same time 130 lbs. of sulphuric acid, and which ought to be recover- 
ed in the ashes of the crop from one acre. Now, the ashes of 41 
cwts. of gypsed clover, abstracting the carbonic acid, weigh 2 cwts. 
8 lbs., containing in the 100, 3^ of sulphuric acid. But the amount 
of ash, were the acid of the ammoniacal sulphate fixed in the crop, 
would rise to 3 cwt. 1 qr. 20 lbs., and the ash would then contain 
70 per cent, of sulphuric acid. 

Before promulgating this last objection against received theories, I 
thought it right to ascertain whether the ashes contain, in the state 
of sulphate, the whole of the sulphur pre-existing in the incinerated 
plant. For it was not impossible that at the high temperature em- 
ployed, the silica might react upon the sulphates so as to expel a 
portion of the sulphuric acid. However improbable this expulsion, 
owing to the great excess of potash always present in clover ash, 
it seemed expedient to determine the fact. 

After having made out as exactly as possible the quantity of ash 
left by the hay, and also the sulphuric acid, I took a certain weight 
of the same hay, burned it in a platina crucible along with a mixture 
of chlorate and carbonate of potash, and then sought for the sulphu- 
ric acid in the product of the ignition. 

1000 parts of the plant furnished directly 3 of sulphuric acid, and 
by analysis of the ash, 2.8. 

Thus, the alkaline ashes retain all the sulphur pre-existing in the 
plant which produced them. 

I have laid stress upon the small proportion of sulphuric acid in a 
crop of clover, because there yet remains for consideration a third 
theory of gypsing, which I have helped to propagate, although 
doubtful concerning the author. This is founded upon the assumption 
that the proportion of sulphur is much greater in the leguminous 
than in the cereal tribe. Now, as gypsum is generally adapted to 
the manurement of leguminous plants, the origin of the sulphur has 
been ascribed to sulphate of lime incorporated with the soil. This 
view appeared the more plausible to M. Dumas and myself, inas- 
much as in accordance with it plants operated as reducing agents. 
It is, besides, very probable that sulphur, as an immediate constituent 
principle of vegetables, is derived from sulphates ; but do leguminous 
plants really contain more than the cereals 1 This seems doubtful, 
since careful investigation of the azotized principles of plants has 
shown gluten, caseine, and legumine to be nearly identical in com- 
position. I moreover find upon analysis of tiie ashes, that clover, 
haricots, and beans do not sensibly contain more sulphur than rye, 



382 , AMMONIACAJ. SALTS. 

wheat, oats, and potatoes. There appears to be no doubt, therefore, 
that the sulphur required by plants is supplied abundantly by the soil 
enriched with ordinary manure, as happens in the culture of the 
cereals, roots, and tubers. 

In a word, it may be presumed that Paris-plaster acts usefully on 
artificial meadows by introducing lime into the soil. This is con- 
sistent both with the analysis of the ashes of the crops produced and 
of the soil ; for according to the researches of M. Rigaud de Tlsle, 
gypsum operates only upon soils which do not contain a sufficient 
dose of lime in the state of carbonate.* 

OF AMMONIACAL SALTS. 

The last products of the putrefaction of azotized matters being 
ammoniacal combinations, it necessarily follows that salts having 
ammonia for their base, must act usefully in vegetation. This is 
confirmed by the employment of guano, and by experiments in which 
ammoniacal compounds have been directly applied as manure. I 
have already pointed attention to the observations of Davy relative 
to the favorable effect of carbonate of ammonia upon the develop- 
ment of plants, and shall now detail some recent trials made by IM. 
Schattenmann with the sulphate and muriate of the same base. 

These salts were introduced into the soil as a solution marking 
one degree of Beaume's areometer, and in the dose of 102 bushels 
per acre. In 1843, the effects produced upon wheat by muriate 
and sulphate of ammonia were most distinct ; as was also the case 
with natural meadows, which yielded under the influence of this 
liquid manure 82 cwts. of hay per acre, precisely double the crop 
afforded by the same meadow land without the salts of ammonia ; 
but another important fact, and which M. Schattenmann announces 
with confidence as having been ])roved by repeated trials, is this ; 
that solution of sulphate of ammonia employed in the same dose, and 
at the same degree of concentration, causes no appreciable meliora- 
tion upon trefoil and lucerne. The result of a solution of sal-am- 
moniac was equally negative. 

These observations agree in certain points with those formerly 
made by Rigaud de I'lsle, and more lately by M. Lecoq. But they 
are in direct opposition with the experiments of several physiologists 
who have studied the action of ammoniacal salts presented separate- 
ly to vegetables, a circumstance very different from that wherein 
ammoniacal solutions are incorporated with arable land. Thus, M. 
Bouchardatf has stated that young plants of mcntha aquatica and 
sylvestri.s, and of mimosa pudica die very soon, when made to ve- 
getate with the roots plunged in very weak solutions of muriate, 
nitrate, and sulphate of ammonia. In offering, some years back, 
divers considerations upon guano, I promulgated the opinion that 
ammoniacal salts, in order to serve as azotized manure, must always 
contain organic acids or carbonic acid. Perhaps the term useful 

♦Mtmoires de la Soci6t(i (r.\KriruUurl', anniV 1344. 

t Boucharilat, Comptcs rendus du r.\cad6mio des Sciences, torn. xvi. 



AMMONIACAL SALTS. 333 

salt may be now restricted to the carbonate alone. At least, having 
watered young plants of trefoil, grown in silicious sand, with solu- 
tion of oxalate of ammonia at ^gth, I observed them die after the 
lapse of eight or ten days. Plants of the same size, sown under 
like conditions, but irrigated with distilled water, continued to grow, 
and flowered. 

In treating of gypsing, I have assigned my reasons against admit- 
ting that the azote fixed during the culture of trefoil, proceeds from 
the sulpliate or muriate of ammonia naturally absorbed. I again 
assert, that it is materially impossible that ammoniacal salts com- 
bined with inorganic acids, other than the carbonic, can be useful as 
manure to plants, when administered separately ; they can only be- 
come advantageous when their composition has undergone modifica- 
tion. 

Two cwt. (220 lbs.) of wheat-sheaves, (straw and grain,) contain 
upon an average 2 lbs. 1 oz. 14 dwts. of azote, and leave after igni- 
tion 11 lbs. 3 oz. 16 dwts. of ash, into which enter 1 oz. 7 dwts. of 
sulphuric acid, and 11 dwts. of chlorine. 

In the ammoniacal salts : 

100 of azote corresponds to 283 of sulphuric acid. 
" " 257 of chlorine. 

Let us now consider sulphate of ammonia, which, according to the 
experiments of M. Schattenmann, supplied an excellent manure for 
wheat. If the 2 lbs. 1 oz. 14 dwts. of azote contained in the 2 cwt. 
of sheaves be derived from the sulphate absorbed by the cereal, the 
sulphuric acid of the sulphate ought to be recovered in its ashes ; 
and according to the above standard, these ashes ought to contain 
6 lbs. 16 dwts. of sulphuric acid. They afforded by analysis only 

1 oz. 7 dwts. 

Applying the same reasoning to muriate of ammonia, we find, 

supposing the azote of the 2 cwt. of sheaves to emanate from this 
salt, that the ashes should contain 5 lbs. 6 oz. 2 dwts. of chlorine ; 
whereas they really contain but 14 dwts. 

Witliout doubt, the nitrogenous principles of the cereal cannot be re- 
ferred solely to the ammoniacal salts in the trials of I\I. Schattenmann ; 
the manure given to the soil, and the atmosphere must have contribu- 
ted a share. The appreciation of the value of ammoniacal salts be- 
comes more precise when the results obtained on meadow land are 
estimated. There the produce was doubled, and of every 2 cwt. of 
hay gathered, 1 cwt. may be ascribed to the action of the salt. 

Two cwt. of hay, containing 4 lbs. 16 dwts. of azote, leave 16 lbs. 

2 oz. of ash. 

If the half (2 lbs. 8 dwts.) of the azote of the fodder comes from 
the ammoniacal salts, the ashes will contain : 

lbs. oz. dwts. 

5 8 4 of sulphuric acid, if the sulphate has been used. 

5 2 •' " if th? muriate has been used. 

Now, the ashes of the hay yielded by analysis : 

oz. dwts. 

5 9 of sulphuric acid. 

5 4 of chlorine. 



334 A!M3IONIA('AI, SALTS. 

It is then very probable that jf the ammoniacal salts afford azote 
to the plants, they enter not as muriate, sulphate, or phosphate, be- 
cause there is no reason to believe that acids united with an alkali 
are eliminated almost in totality durin<T the act of vegetation. It 
necessarily follows, that the ammonia of these salts, in order to yield 
to vegetables its constituent azote, must reach their organs in the 
form of carbonate, inasmuch as that is the sole ammoniacal salt 
which seems to exercise a direct and favorable agency. 

However, if such be the case, how comes it to pass, that ammo- 
niacal salts, as the muriate, phosphate, and sulphate, are converted 
into carbonate when once incorporated in the soil ] Good arable 
land almost always contains, it is true, carbonate of lime ; but there 
is no ground for admitting an acid interchange betwixt the calca- 
reous and ammoniacal salts. We know, on the contrary, that car- 
bonate of ammonia reacts instantaneously upon muriate and sulphate 
of lime, the products of this reaction being on the one hand muriate 
and sulphate of ammonia, on the other, carbonate of lime. The gyp- 
sum theory of Liebig is based upon the fact of this double decompo- 
sition, whereby the ammoniacal carbonate of rain-water is fixed in 
the state of sulphate at the cost of the sulphate of lime put on the 
ground as manure. 

This reaction of sulphate of lime upon carbonate of ammonia is 
incontestable as a laboratory experiment ; but in well-tilled grounds 
containing just the proper quantity of moisture, the reaction takes 
place in the inverse sense. The carbonate of lime reacts upon the 
sulphate of ammonia, and there result carbonate of ammonia and 
sulphate of lime. 

This fact, however singular at first sight, is explained upon prin- 
ciples established by Berthollet in his cliemical statics : 

When two saline solutions are mixed together, and from the mix- 
ture an insoluble salt results, the insoluble compound is formed and 
precipitated. This is what happens on pouring a solution of car- 
bonate of ammonia into one of sulphate of lime. But if, instead of 
bringing the two salts together dissolved, they are mixed in a pul- 
verulent state, and just sufllcient water is added to promote the reac- 
tion without dissolving the products, a volatile compound forms and 
is evolved — namely, (carbonate of ammonia. 

The experimental proof is easy, and not without interest. If chalk 
previously washed be intimately mixed with crystallized sulphate of, 
ammonia, no change ensues, provided the powders are very dry. 
Let moist sand be introduced so as to impart to the mixture the con- 
sistence of light arable land of the usual humidity ; at the very in- 
stant vapors of carbonate of ammonia, cognizable by their action on 
vegetable colors and their odor, are developed. When water is 
added in excess, the disengagement of ammoniacal vapor immedi- 
ately ceases. The carbonate of ammonia not yet volatilized, dis- 
solves and acts upon the ready formed gypsum so as to constitute 
sulphate of ammonia and carbonate of lime. The ordinary reaction 
is restored. Finally, this watery mixture being exposed to the air, 
furnishes anew ammoniacal vapors in proportion as the water vapor- 



AMMONIACAL SALTS. 335 

izes, and die volatile salt is progressively evolved until the mass is 
quite dry. In maintaining a similar mixture in a fit and constant 
state of moisture we may in two or three days, under the influence 
of a temperature of from 68" to 80° F., dissipate the greater portion 
of the ammonia of the sulphate, and obtain a quantity of sulphate of 
lime indicating the progress of the reaction. 

It is almost needless to remark that sulphate of lime, placed in a 
condition of moisture analogous to that of the chalk, undergoes no 
alteration from the carbonate of ammonia. Thus, in the ordinary 
circumstances of humidity of cultivated land, it is at least doubtful 
whether the plaster diffused through it definitively retains the am- 
monia of the rain-water in the state of sulphate. 

To estimate the sulphate of lime produced by the reaction between 
the sulphate of ammonia and carbonate of lime, the mixture after 
having been entirely dried in the air is to be treated with cold water. 
The lime of the sulphate dissolved is next thrown down by oxalate 
of ammonia, and computed in the state of carbonate. 

In order to ascertain the presence of sulphate of ammonia the 
mixture is to be digested in dilute alcohol, which dissolves this salt 
without taking up sulphate of lime. 

IMuriate, phosphate, and oxalate of ammonia comport themselves 
as the sulphate. Carbonate of lime decomposes them under the 
same circumstances, giving rise to equivalent products.* 

The preceding facts may perhaps tend to reconcile the contra- 
dictory results obtained in the application of ammoniacal salts as 
manure. When muriate, phosphate, or sulphate of ammonia is pre- 
sented to plants, these salts produce no useful effect ; they are ab- 

* 1. 15.4 grains of crj'stallized sulphate of ammonia incorporated with five or six 
times its weight of chalk, gave after two days' exposure of the moist mixture in the 
open air, 12.3 grs. of sulphate of lime. In another experiment 16.0 grs. of sulphate of 
ammonia were obtained from 13.1 grs. of calcareous sulphate. Now according to the 
proportions of ammoniacal salt there ought to have been obtained 13 grs. and 14 grs. 
of sulphate of lime. Thus about 9-lOths of the aiimionia contained in the sulphate sub- 
mitted to experiment had been converted into carbonate. 

2. 1G.9 grs. of sulphate of ammonia were mixed with 123.2 grs. of chalk, and from 
924 to 1071 grs. of silicious sand. The mixture was kept moist and exposed to the air 
during four days, the temperature ranging from 68° to 80* F. The substance, after 
being dried by the action of the air, was set to digest in weak alcohol ; the alcoholic 
liquor yielded only an insignificant trace of sulphate of ammonia. There was about 
18.5 grs. of sulphate of lime. 

3. A very simple means of determining the reaction in question consists in plunging 
a fragment of chalk into a solution of sulphate of ammonia ; the fragment so imbued 
on being exposed to the air emits during several days fumes of carbonate of ammonia. 
Several bits of chalk moistened in the solution, and exposed by the aid of an aspirator 
to a continuous current of air, afterwards washed in muriatic acid, disengaged enough 
of ammoniacal vapor to form in the acid nearly 15 grs. of sal-ammoniac. 

4. With a slightly moistened silicious sand were incorporated 30.8 grs. of gypsum ; 
the mixture then watered with a solution containing 30.8 grs. of carbonate of ammo- 
nia, was allowed to remain in the air during eight days, having always the consistence 
and humidity of arable land. At the end of this time it was dried, then treated with 
weak alcohol; the alcoholic fluid evaporiited left no sulphate of ammonia. 

5. Phosphate of ammonia, mixed with chalk, and kept in a moist state for some 
days, comported itself exactly as the sulphate in the same circumstances ; 9-10th3 of 
the ammoniacal phosphate were converted into phosphate of lime. 

6. The reaction of oxalate of ammonia upon chalk is visible even when the mixture 
is well watered ; this is explained indeed by the powerful affinity of oxalic acid for 
lime. The totality of the alkaline oxahite is promptly changed into oxalate of lime 
an-* carbonate of ammonia. 



3J3f) WATEli. 

sorbed in liiiiitod quantity, like tlic majority of soluble substances. 
But if instead of administering' lliem separately dissolved in water, 
as was done in the physiological experiments, they are incorporated 
with a loose and humid soil, these salts react upon the calcareous 
matter almost always existing in the ground, and are transformed 
into carbonate of ammonia, which exerts undeniably a favorable in- 
fluence upon vegetation. From these facts it may be presumed 
that the introduction of lime and marl is not merely to supply the 
defective calcareous element, but likewise a principle, carbonate of 
lime, which produces a particular action upon the manure, changing, 
through double decomposition, the unassimilable ammoniacal salts 
there present into a carbonate capal)le of being assimilated, which 
transmits to the plant the azote of the organic matter of the dung 
and the carbon contained in the calcareous rocks. 

These reactions which go on between soluble salts and one that 
is insoluble under the peculiar conditions united in arable land, show 
that we must not always conclude as to what passes in the ground 
from phenomena observed in the laboratory of the chemist ; and it 
is probable that by extending the study of these singular reactions 
to alkaline salts generally, we shall better understand the mode of 
action and utility of saline substances in agriculture. Thus, for 
example, the operation of common salt as a fertilizer is still very 
obscure. Many skilful husbandmen question its efficacy ; neverthe- 
less, when moderately employed it seems to do good. In plants 
growing on the sea-coast soda is found in a great measure com- 
bined with organic acids, and the chlorine deduced by analysis from 
their ashes is nowise proportional to the alkali they contain. The 
whole sodium does not enter the vegetable as a chloride, but very 
likely as carbonate of soda, and that in virtue of a reaction analogous 
to the one which calcareous matter has upon ammoniacal salts. 

It is quite certain that chloride of sodium in solution is not affect- 
ed by carbonate of lime ; but then it was proved by Clouet that if 
into sand moistened with this same solution powdered chalk be put, 
and the mixture Iei"t in contact with air, an efflorescence of sesqui- 
carbonate of soda ere long makes its appearance. Thus by the 
conjoint effect of capillarity and the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, 
common salt in the conditions above mentioned undergoes by contact 
with chalk a partial decomposition, of which the result is carbonate 
of soda, a salt, like carbonate of potash, most favorable to the growth 
of plants. Accordingly, in furnishing sea-salt to a soil sufficiently 
calcareous, we really enrich it with carbonate of soda. We more- 
over perceive that the same salt diffused through land devoid of 
carbonate of lime may not produce any fertilizing effect. 

OF WATER. 

Water is not only indispensable to the life of plants, but likewise 
promotes vegetation after the manner of a manure, on account of 
the saline or organic substances it generally holds in solution. Rain 
is the source of the soft waters which flow in rivers, spring from 



■WATER. 337 

the soil, or constitute lakes. Rain-water although nearly pure is 
not absolutely exempt from extraneous matters. The air, especial- 
ly after continued drought, always holds dust in suspension; this 
yields to the rain by which it is precipitated, whatever soluble mat- 
ter it may contain. 

It is further ascertained by the experiments of Cavendish and 
Seguin, that whenever the electric spark traverses a humid mixture 
of oxygen and azote, nitric acid and nitrate of ammonia are produced. 
Now this frequently happens ; and according to Professor Liebig 
storm-rain always contains nitric acid associated with lime or ammo- 
nia. Common rain seldom contains nitrates, merely faint traces of 
common salt.* 

In river and spring-water there necessarily exists a larger amount 
of dissolved substances derived from the strata they pass through, 
varying in nature according to the geological structure of the locali- 
ty. From old crystalline rocks, like granite, water issues sometimes 
so little impregnated with salts, as to be almost identical with dis- 
tilled water ; that, on the contrar\', which rises from a calcareous or 
gypseous bed is always contaminated with salts of lime. Notwith- 
standing the minute quantity of saline or earthy ingredients in spring 
and river-waters, they are drinkable, and considered good when 
they are limpid, without odor, capable of dissolving soap, and fitted 
for vegetable cookery. These two last characters are essential, 
inasmuch as proving that the waters contain only infinitesimal quan- 
tities of soluble salts of lime. 

The action of tests readily indicates the nature of the dissolved 
salts. 

Water contains : sulphates or carbonates, if nitrate of barytes 
causes a precipitate ; a sulphate, when the precipitate is not redis- 
solved by the addition of nitric acid ; 

Chlorides, if it give with nitrate of silver a curdy precipitate, in- 
soluble upon addition of nitric acid; 

Lime, when rendered turbid by oxalate of ammonia ; 

Magi^esia, if when mixed with pure ammonia, and preserved in a 
closely stopped vial, a white flocculent deposite ensues. This test, 
however, is only applicable to water that has been boiled sufficiently 
long to expel all the carbonic acid in solution, and which would tend 
to hold any carbonate of lime dissolved. Carbonate of lime is sepa- 
rated from water by ammonia, after some hours, in the form of gran- 
ular crystals, which adhere to the sides of the vessel. 

In order to render the operation of tests more sensible, the bulk 
of the water may be reduced to a half or a fourth by evaporation. 

Besides fixed salts, river-water always contains those of ammo- 
nia, particularly the carbonate ; this fact was first ascertained, re- 
lative to the Seine water, by M. Chevreul.f Subsequently, Pro- 
fessor Liebig has discovered the same ammoniacal salt in rain-wa- 
ter ; and M. Hunefeld has proved, that spring-water likewise con- 

* Annates de Chimie, t. xxiv. 2e s6rie. 
t Chevreiil, Annates de Chimie, t. Ixxxii. p. 56, 
39 



33d WATER. 

tains it.* Lastly, M. Hermann has even determined quantitatively, 
carbonate of ammonia in the ferruginous waters of a turf-pit. The 
water of the Nile is not exempt from it, judging at least from the 
analysis of its mud. According to Regnault, 100 parts of this mud 
dried in the air contain :t 

Chloride of sodium, sulphate of soda, and 

carbonate of ammonia J 

Organic matter 9 

Water 10 

Oxide of iron 6 

J?llica 4 

Alumina 48 

Carbonate of lime 18 

Carbonate of magnesia 4 

100 

The beautiful synthetic experiments of M. Dumas demonstrate 
that water is formed of: 

Oxygen 88.89 

Hydrogen 11.11 

When pure, it boils at a temperature of 212° F. under a barome- 
tric pressure of 30 (29.921) inches. It congeals at 32° F. 

All natural bodies dilate, augment in volume, by the action of 
heat, and contract under diminution of temperature. Water is 
amenable to this law between rather wide limits ; it deviates, how- 
ever, and presents an anomaly as it approaches congelation. As 
with all liquids, the density of water gradually increases in propor- 
tion as it cools, until its temperature is 39°.38 F. Setting out from' 
this point the density diminishes, the liquid dilates more and more, 
so that at 32° it occupies nearly the same volume that it did at 49". 
From this remarkable property, it results that during the most in- 
tense cold the stagnant water which covers the meadows rarely at- 
tains a lower temperature than 39°, whereby the organs of plants 
suffer no damage. 

Let us suppose, in fact, that at the beginning of winter a sheet of 
stagnant water has a temperature of about 54° ; in proportion as the 
liquid at the surface cools, it becomes denser, descends, and is im- 
mediately replaced by inferior layers, which rise in the ratio of their 
less density ; but these new superior layers, subjected to the same 
refrigerating cause, contract and descend alternately. There is 
then established in the fluid molecules, movements of ascension and 
descent, of which the result is the cooling of the entire mass. Let 
us now admit that in virtue of this continued mingling of the cooled 
superior layers with those below, the temperature of the sheet of 
water is lowered to 39". 38 ; at this degree of the thermometer, the 
water acquires its maximum density ; in parting with its heat it not 
only contracts no more, but becomes lighter. If then a body of 
stagnant water at a temperature of 39° is exposed to the chilling 
action of tho atmosphere, the superior layer, far colder than the in- 
ferior, will no longer descend, since it will become lighter as its 



* Liebie, Trait* de Chimie, Introduction, 
t Description de I'Egyple, t. ii. p. 406. 



WATB;R. r»^'J9 

temperature diminishes. Thus it is that the water of a pond or lake 
freezes at the surface, while it preserves beneath a tempeiature 
some degrees above 32°. In a situation where the temperature of 
the air was 29", Davy found the thermometer indicate 43° in tlic 
herbage of an inundated meadow comj)letely covered with ice.* 

Water is always impregnated with atmospheric air, and a minute 
quantity of carbonic acid. Deprived of air, it is not agreeable to 
drink ; it is even said, when long continued, to prove unwholesome 
if the dissolved gases are expelled by ebullition. River-water usual- 
ly contains 35th in volume of air, and j^th carbonic acid. In spring- 
water, the amount of the latter is sometimes far more considerable. 

The quantity and nature of saline ingredients in drinkable water 
vary much : in an agricultural point of view, the study of the con- 
tained salts would certainly be useful. The waters which serve as 
drink to the cattle of a farm, introduce into the dung-heap all the 
matters which are dissolved or held in suspension. At Bechelbronn, 
for example, I find that more than 2 cwts. of alkaline salts get into 
the dung in this way every year. When a farmer has the choice of 
several waters for giving his cattle or irrigating his meadows, he 
will do well to select that which is richest in alkaline salts, and still 
good to drink. In the steppes of America, it is astonishing with 
what discernment the cattle choose waters for allaying their thirst, 
containing minute quantities of sulphate of soda or common salt. 

I close these considerations with a tabular view of the most recent 
analyses. The quantities of salts put down have been deduced from 
100,000 parts of water for drinking. 

* Davy, Agricultural Chemistry, p. 352 



840 



. 

Of the Seine above Paris . 

Marne 

Ourcq at St. Denis . . 
Yonne at Avallon . . 

Therouenne . . . . 

(Tergogne 

Bicvre near Paris . . 

Arcueil 

Spring of Roye (Lyons) . 
Fountain Spring (Lyons). 
Rhone at Lyons (July) . 
Ditto ditto (February) 
Spring of the garden of 

plant.s at Lyons . . . 
Of Lake Geneva . . 
Of the Arve (in August) . 
Ditto in February . . 
Loire near Orleans . . 
Loiret 


o 
d 

n 

n 

o 

■^ 
n 

!3 


^ JO ►- i-i ^^ ts !-■ >— h- to ^o h- i— h- 
io^ioKstoo ooji-oocooioJo^wbioiw 


Carbonate of 
lime. 




Carbonate of 
magnesia. 






o- nJ t" 
••pop- • g 2 g ►- lo p p 


Silica. 


00* Oijoblio OC5--J*'iD^CnoWa;OiK-a3 

03 


Sulphate of 
lime. 


0.6 
1.2 
7.0 

traces 
0.7 

3.1 
2.9 
6.2 


Sulphate of 
mapnesia. 




Sulphate of 
Soda. 






1— > H-i "^ I-. !-• 

io>-'- • • CD '—I a ti • OtDCnb^tnCT* • O 


Chloride of 
calcium. 




Chloride of 
magnesium. 


traces 
idem 

0.9 
1.2 
1.9 
1.2 
0.2 
traces 

12.6 

traces 
2.5 


Chloride of 

sodium (marine 

salt.) 


traces 

traces 

of lime 
7.6 


Nitrates. 


traces 
idem 
idem 
idem 

• • 
traces 

idem 

idem 

idem 

strong 

traces 

0.6 

0.3 

0.4 


Organic matter. 


qoct--4^jocto <xpC5:r-pp^^*^^7-JQOOO 
rf^-QCWODJcbo ii.crsci*.^botobDbi^aooJo 


Total weight of 
matter. 


^- £. ;i- s.- 5" s.- c 2 c g ^ ^ ^ ^ £. ^ p S.- g 

P ^ ^a 3 _3 3 P 


H 

B ► 

M O 

_^ 1 



ROTATION. 341 

The water of the Artesian well at Grenelle, near Paris, according 
to the analysis of M. Payen, contains, in 100,000 parts : 

Carbonate of lime 6.80 

Carbonate of magnesia 1.42 

Bicarbonate of potash 2.96 

Sulphate of potash 1.20 

Chloride of potassium 1.09 

Silica.". 0.57 

Yellow matter, not defined 0.02 

Organic azotized matter 0.24 

14.30 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF THE ROTATION OF CROPS; 

^ 1. OF THE ORGANIC MATTER OF MANURE AND OF CROPS. 

It is known that the atmosphere and the organic matters diffused 
through the earth concur simultaneously to maintain the life of 
plants ; but how far each contributes is undetermined. We shall now 
study the theory of the exhaustion of the soil by culture, and the 
rotation of crops. 

When a succession of crops is grown upon fertile land without 
renewal of manure, the produce gradually diminishes ; and after a 
certain period, if it be grain, the quantity which at the outset was 
eiglit or nine times the amount of the seed, will be reduced to three 
times or even to twice the seed. Thus crops impair the fertility of 
the soil, and eventually exhaust it. 

It has been long admitted that different species of plants manifest 
great diversity in their powers of exhaustion. Certain kinds, indeed, 
as trefoil and lucerne, far from exhausting it, communicate new 
vigor. As a general rule, however, every plant may be said to 
impoverish the soil in which it grows. This impoverishment is al- 
ways manifest when the plant after maturity is completely removed, 
but is less sensible when much rubbish is left. Thus, for example, 
clover, after yielding two crops, which are generally cut as fodder, 
might still yield a third ; this last, however, is generally ploughed 
into the ground as manure, being buried along with a considerable 
quantity of roots. This plan of meliorating the soil by the cultiva- 
tion of trefoil is what is called vianuring by smothering ; a method 
practised from a remote period in the south of Europe, and which 
offers decided advantages in those distiicts where there is abun- 
dance of pasture land. Hence, in smothering trefoil, the soil is 
amended at the expense of the nutritive niatter it contains. 

Thaer, who endeavored to make theory and practice mutually 
agree, laid it down as a rule, that the exhaustion occasioned by 

29* 



842 ROTATION. 

cropping is proportioned to the amount of nutriment in the crops, 
estimating the nutritive value according to Einhof 's determination. 
But the above deduction is founded upon error. 

In fact, to adopt the above principle is tacitly admitting that the 
whole organic matter of plants originally comes from the soil. This, 
no doubt, contributes in a certain proportion to the development of 
plants, but so also do air and water. On the other hand, physiolo- 
gists, in opposition to the ideas of tiie school of Thaer, have perhaps 
exaggerated the material withdrawn from the air. Thus, M. de 
Saussure reckons that a sun-flower derives from the ground during 
its growth not more than -^^th of its weight, supposing the plant dry. 
The reasoning upon which he formed his conclusion is based, on the 
one hand, upon a knowledge of the extractive matter of garden- 
mould ; on the other, upon the quantity of water a plant like sun- 
flower may absorb in a given time, to return it again to the air by 
transpiration.* 

Little objection could be urged against the above conclusion, did 
not the experiments of M. Gazzeri tend to prove that roots virtually 
exercise, by their contact with solid organic matter, an incontesta- 
ble absorbent action in imparting solubility f I might refer to an 
observation of M. de Saussure, in which he states that plants grown 
in garden-mould dej)rived of its soluble components by repeated 
washing, reached, nevertheless, perfect maturity, although the pro- 
duce in seed was less abundant than it might have been. J It is 
most probable that both parties have promulgated extreme opinions. 
Plants possibly draw from the atmosphere more than agriculturists 
commonly suppose, and the soil furnishes, independently of saline 
and earthy substances, a proportion of organic matter larger than 
certain physiologists admit. There is every reason to believe, from 
what I could learn respecting guano during my sojourn on the coast 
of Peru, that the greater part of the azotized principles of plants 
originates in the ammoniacal salts which exist or are formed in ma- 
nure.^ 

In discussing the advantage of one course of crops over another, 
the question always hinges upon that of exhaustion. Wherever an 
unlimited supply of dung and of handiwork can be procured, there 
is no absolute necessity for following any regular system of rotation. 
Under such favorable circumstances, it is expedient to ascertain 
what kind of cultivation is, commercially speaking, best suited to 
the climate and the soil. There is little to fear that by a continued 
succession of similar crops, the fields will get infested with noxious 
weeds, because this iiu^onvcnienre may be obviated by labor. Nor 
is impoverishment of the soil to be dreaded, since that can be re- 
medied by tlio purchase of manure. The wliole craft of agriculture 
is reducible to coniparison of the probable value of the crop with 
the cost of manure, labor, &c. Farming of this sort excludes the 

* Saussure, Rcclierelics Chimiques sur la V6<;6tation, p. 268. 
t Annates de I'.Agricultnre I'rancaise, No. iii. p. 57. 
i Saussure, Recherchcs Ohimiqu'.-s, p. 171. 
i Annates do Cliiniie, t. Ixv. annee 1837. 



ROTATION. 343 

keep and propagation of cattle, and may be strictly regarded more 
as gardening than as agriculture. 

But where manure cannot be had from without, things must be 
reduced to a system ; and the amount of produce which it is possi- 
ble to export each year is fixed within bounds, which cannot be ex- 
ceeded with impunity. 

"When by judicious cultivation land is rendered fertile, it is ne- 
cessary, towards securing its fertility, to supply after every succession 
of crops equal quantities of manure. In considering this in a purely 
chemical point of view, it may be said that the produce which can 
be taken away without damaging the fertility of the land, is the or- 
ganic matter contained in the crops, abstraction made of that present 
in the manure. Indeed, this latter substance must in some form or 
other return to the soil to fecundate it anew. It is capital placed in 
the ground, the interest of which is represented by the commercial 
value of the produce of all the other agricultural operations. 

Where lands are extensive, population scattered, and means of 
communication difficult, there is less necessity for being tied down to 
systematic cultivation. There is always enough for a scanty popu- 
lation. A field yields grain, and after the harvest is converted for a 
series of years into meadow-land ; such is the pastoral system in all 
its simplicity. To this primitive state of husbandry may be referred 
those plantations on cleared land in countries covered with forests. 
When the trees are felled and burned upon the spot, the soil yields 
for long and without manure, crops of maize and of wheat of sur- 
prising quality, at the cost of the fecundity acquired during ages of 
repose. 

But when from increased population the land becomes more valu- 
able, a larger amount of produce is demanded. Imperfect culture 
would prove inadequate. Accordingly a triennial rotation of crops 
was very anciently adopted in the north of Europe, consisting as is 
well known of fallow land frequently ploughed during summer, fol- 
lowed by two years of grain. The fallow land received a certain 
quantity of manure to repair the exhaustion occasioned by the two 
crops of grain ; hence when this mode of rotation is adopted there 
should be always sufficient meadow-land to supply manure. 

Leaving waste one third of the surface has always been held a 
grave objection against triennial rotation. Hence various attempts 
have been made to get rid of the summer fallow. Some encourage- 
ment was given to these attempts from what occurs in horticulture, 
where the ground is rendered continually productive.* In certain 
countries, moreover, tillage is only interrupted by severe weather. 

On the other hand, it has been long remarked that it is not always 
beneficial to grow grain during several consecutive years in the 
same ground, even when it is fertile and manure is abundant, owing 
to the almost insurmountable difficulty of destroying weeds. The 
fallow was justly considered the most efficient and economic means 
of getting rid of these. For this purpose fallow-crops, as they were 

* Thaer, Agricnltare raisonnie- 



344 ROTATION. 

called, were introduced. Peas, beans, vetches, were at first the 
only plants used as fiillow-crops. 

However, it was soon perceived that the fallow-crops occasioned 
a very sensible diminution in the produce of corn ; to counteract 
this inconvenience recoursi was had to a surcharge of manure ; but 
as this cannot always be obtained, it was necessary either to reduce 
the cultivated surface or to appropriate a certain amount of meadow. 
Still the fallow-crops had this advantage, that they enabled the farm- 
er to derive from land a greater amount of produce in a given time 
without prejudice to the raising of corn. Hence the plan of turn- 
ing the fallow to account was soon generally adopted. 

The introduction of clover so modified the system of fallow-crops 
as at one time to induce the belief that the point of perfection had 
been attained in agriculture.* This was when it was ascertained 
that trefoil, which had hitherto been only cultivated in small enclo- 
sures, might be sown in spring upon corn land, and occupy next 
year the place of the fallow in the triennial rotation. Trefoil, so far 
from exhausting the soil, was found to give it new fertility, and the 
succeeding corn crop yielded a plentiful harvest. 

It may be easily conceived what advantages were expected in 
substituting for the unproductive fallow the cultivation of a plant 
which did not impoverish the land, and furnished a quantity of ex- 
cellent fodder that served as food for an additional number of cattle. 
It was even alleged that this plant cleared the fields of weeds. 

A few years' experience sufficed to show that trefoil did not pos- 
sess all the advantages attributed to it. On renewing the clover 
every third year on the same piece of ground it sometimes failed. 
Schubarth, the most zealous and enlightened advocate for its use, 
limited the renewal of the artificial meadow at first to the sixth, and 
eventually to the ninth year ; and finding that it did not completely 
destroy the weeds in corn, he had recourse to hoed-crops for that 
purpose. 

The introduction of trefoil has gradually led to the system of al- 
ternate rotation of crops generally adopted at present ; and more- 
over, contrary to the anticipations of Schubarth, it may be renewed 
every four or five years on the same parcel of land. 

The impossibility of substituting trefoil for the fallow of the trien- 
nial rotation was offered as a fresh proof of the principle maintained 
from time immemorial by agriculturists, namely, that different species 
of plants should be cultivated in succession on the same land, and 
that the same species should not recur except at considerable in- 
tervals ; the earth yielding much finer crops when the same species 
do not follow in immediate sequence.! 

Attempts have been made at various times to explain this pheno- 
menon. It was at first thought that different species of vegetables 
required a particular nutriment ; but it was soon perceived to be 
otherwise, and that the organs of each plant derived the necessary 
juices from substances which concur in the nutrition of vegetables 

* Thaer, .\gricullure raisonntc t Ibid. 



ROTATION. 345 

generally. In effect, plants the most opposite in botanical character 
and properties, alimentary as well as poisonous, will live and flourish 
on the same mound of earth, and with the same manure. Moreover 
these plants reciprocally withdraw nourishment from one another, 
which could not occur did each species need different elements of 
nutrition.* 

When it was taken for granted that the organs of plants elaborate 
a common nourishment derived from the manure, then vegetables of 
diverse organizations were supposed endued with the faculty of 
searching at different depths for the nutritive matter contained in the 
soil, by reason of a more or less considerable extension and develop- 
ment of their roots. This served to explain how a plant with long 
and perpendicular roots could, as a sequel to corn, derive benefit 
from manure situate in the undermost layers of ploughed land. It 
is possible that an action of this kind may take place under certain 
circumstances, but the explanation can never be generally re- 
ceived. 

Another explanation of the necessity for alternate crops is based 
upon properties assigned to the excretions of the roots, as compared 
to animal excrements. 

The excretion of roots, first observed by Brugman in the Viola 
arvensis,f has been confirmed by the recent observations of M. Ma- 
fiaire. This physiologist obtained the matter exuded from certain 
plants by keeping their roots in water ; but, strange to say, could not 
discover it in silicious sand in which certain vegetables had been 
grown. J I myself likewise failed in detecting sensible traces of 
organic matter in sand which had served as soil during several 
months to wheat and clover ; a result which renders the fact of 
radicular excretion doubtful. The excretion consequent upon im- 
mersion in water is perhaps the effect of disease. 

Be that as it may, upon the assumption of the excretion from 
roots, Messrs. Yon Huml)oldt and Plenck have explained the cause 
of the attractions and repulsions of certain plants. § More recently 
M. de Candolie has reproduced this idea as the basis of a theory of 
rotation of crops. If it be supposed, in fact, that the excretion from 
the roots represents vegetable excrements, it may be easily imagin- 
ed that these excretions once deposited in the soil maj' be as pre- 
judicial to the plant which produced them as would be the excrement 
of an animal presented to it as food. On the other hand, by change 
of species, the plant newly implanted may profit by the excretions of 
the preceding crop, absorbing them as nourishment. This ingenious 
hypothesis is deficient in the groundwork, inasmuch as the fact of 
radicular excretion is not sufficiently established. Again, admitting 
the excretion, several facts concur to demonstrate that plants may 
thrive in soil charged with their own excrements. 

The culture of corn, for example, may proceed uninterruptedly, 
as we find in the triennial rotation. I have seen in the table-lands 



* De Candolie, t. i. p. 248. t Ibid. t. ii. p. 1497. 

t Ibid. t. iii. p. 14T4. ^ De Candolie, t. iii. p. J474. 



346 ROTATION. 

of the Andes wheat fields, which liad yielded excellent crops annual- 
ly for more than two centuries. Maize may likewise be continually 
reproduced upon tiie same ground without inconvenience ; this fact 
is well known in the south of Europe ; and the greater portion of 
the coast of Peru has produced nothing else, from a date long ante- 
rior to the discovery of America. Further, potatoes may come again 
and again upon the same soil ; they are incessantly cultivated at 
Santa-Fe and Quito, and nowhere are they of better quality. In- 
digo and sugar-cane may be brought under the same category. In 
Europe the Jerusalem artichoke produces constantly in the same 
place.* It must be conceded, that if all these plants e.xcrete from 
their roots, their excretions are not of such a nature as to interfere 
■with the progress of vegetation of the species producing them. 

But the capital objection to the hypothesis of De Candolle is this, 
that it would be very remarkable indeed did any soluble organic 
matter, like such secretions, not putrefy when lying in the ground. 
In a word, it is difficult to understand how it should resist for years, 
as is pretended, the decomposing influence of heat and moisture to- 
gether. 

That there is no absolute necessity for alternation of crops when 
dung and labor can be readily procured, is undeniable. Never- 
theless, there are certain plants which cannot be reproduced upon 
the same soil advantageously except at intervals more or less re- 
mote. The cause of this exigence on the part of certain vegetables 
is still obscure, and the hypotheses propounded for clearing it up far 
from satisfactory. 

One of the marked advantages of alternate cultures, is the periodic 
cultivation of plants wliich improve the soil. In this way a sort of 
compensation is made for exhaustion. The main thing to be secur- 
ed in rotation of crops is such a system as shall enable the husband- 
man to obtain the greatest amount of vegetable produce with the 
least manure, and in the shortest possible time. This system can 
be alone realized by employing in the course of rotation those plants 
which draw largely upon the atmosphere. 

The best plan of rotation in theory, is that in which the quantity 
of organic matter obtained most exceeds the quantity of organic 
matter introduced into the soil ia the shape of manure. This does 
not hold quite in practice. It is less the surplus amount of organic 
matter over that contained in the manure, than the value of this 
same matter which concerns the agriculturist. The excess required, 
and the form in which it should be produced, must vai-y widely ac- 
cording to locality, commercial demand, and the habits of people, 
considerations wholly apart from theoretical provisions. One point 

* To this list miglit be added, according to the recent researches of M. Braconnot, 
the bay-rose witli double flowers, and Papaver somniferum. That distinguished 
chemist terminates his memoir as follows : "My experiments are unfavorable, as may 
he perceived, to the theory of rotation of crops based on the excretions of the roots. 
These excretions if really occurrinp in the normal stato are so obscure and little known 
as to lead to the inference that the general system of rotations must be referred to 
some other source." (Recherches sur rinlluence des plantes sur le sol, Annnles do 
Chlinic, t. Uxii. p. 27.) 



ROTATION. 347 

in theory that should agree with practice is this, that in no case is it 
possible to export more organic matter, and particularly more azo- 
tized organic matter, than the excess of the same matter contained 
in the manure which is consumed in the course of the rotation. By 
acting upon another presumption the productiveness of the soil would 
be infallibly lessened. 

This irrefragable condition as to the term of exportation from a 
farm suggests some critical remarks upon sundry notions lately pro- 
mulgated. The manufacture of beet-root sugar is an instance. 
European agriculture may probably derive certain advantages fro:n 
this modern branch of industry, although these have been much 
overrated by certain speculators, who contend that sugar may thus 
be obtained through rotation of crops without lessening the other 
produce of the domain ; so that the sugar constitutes an additional 
source of income. This seems to me erroneous. 

If an estate yields annually 100 tons of beet-root for the support 
of cattle, their number must be diminished if the root is to be used 
for making sugar. The organic matter of the sugar extracted there- 
from, is just so much nourishment withheld from the cattle. To 
assert the contrary would be equivalent to saying that potatoes grown 
upon a couple of acres of land, and submitted to the process of dis- 
tillation before being employed as fodder, would feed as many animals 
as if eaten directly : assuredly, the organic principles of the potato 
converted into alcohol are lost as regards nutrition. 

This does not imply that the manufacture of indigenous sugar, 
and of potato spirit, is less productive than breeding and fattening 
cattle. My sole object is to show that only a limited quantity of 
organic matter can be advantageously exported from an agricultural 
establishment. It must depend upon local and commercial circum- 
stances whether this is to be exported in the form of sugar, corn, 
spirit, or butcher-meat. 

The above statement is in apparent contradiction with generally 
received notions. Many persons believe that the manufacture of 
sugar, instead of injuring, is favorable to the breeding of cattle. It 
appears, from a Parliamentary return on this subject, in 1836, that 
in certain estates where sugar was made, the number of animalo 
was increased ; the numerical results are no doubt exact, but thia 
augmentation in cattle is rather to be ascribed to an improved mode 
of farming than to the manufacture of sugar. In establishments 
where the triennial rotation with fallow was pursued, a rotation of 
four or five years with clover and weed-destroying plants has been 
introduced ; so that it is by no means to be wondered at, that inde- 
pendently of beet-root, there should have been a considerable increase 
in other things. The introduction of this root, where it was not 
formerly grown, is of itself an important melioration. But in highly 
cultivated countries, where the most productive rotations have been 
long followed, the extraction of sugar would not effect such advan- 
tageous changes as those announced in the above return. If at 
Bechelbronn a time should ever come, and at present it seems far 
distant, when it would be deemed expedient to make sugar from the 



348 ELEMKM'S OF CROPS. 

beet there grown, it would certainly be requisite to diminish the 
number of cattle, or else to annex more meadow land. It is only 
indirectly, therefore, that the manufacture of home-sugar can pro- 
mote the breeding of cattle, and so prove serviceable to agriculture. 

From the definition given by me of the most advantageous course 
of crops, theoretically considered, it may be inferred how closely the 
study of rotations is connected with that of the exhaustion of the 
soil. Hence, to discuss the value of divers rotations, we must, in 
consonance with theory, compare the quantity of organic matter in 
a sequence of crops, with that in the manure expended upon them. 

From a well-managed farm, where for a series of years an invari- 
able system of culture has been steadily pursued, we must look for 
data. This I have done, as regards Bechelbronn, determining by 
analysis the composition of the manures and crops, and also of the 
more ordinary kinds of fodder or food. For a long time, a five 
years' rotation has been there adopted in the following order : 

1st year. — Potatoes or beet-root manured. 

2(i year. — Wheat sown the antumn of the first year ; clover interposed in the spring. 

3d year. — Trefoil (clover) two crops ; the third crop ploughed in or smothered. 

4th year. — Wheat on the clover-break, turnips after the wheat. 

5th year. — Oats. 

The crop of oats which ends the rotation is generally scanty. 
The soil is then brought back to the point of fertility which it had 
before being dunged ; and it is known by experience that it will not 
now yield a crop of any value. 

I now proceed to detail the analyses of the different substances 
which enter into the rotation, indicating at the same time the average 
produce per acre. 



Tn the rather strong soil of Bechelbronn one acre produces upon 
an average about 105 cwts. of potatoes. This is below the ordinary 
rate of Alsace, where the crop amounts to from 155 to 165 cwts. 
per acre. The leaves and stems are left upon the ground. 

A potato was cut in two, in order to subject it to analysis with a 
proportional part of the peel. The half weighed 335.2 grs. Stove- 
dried and reduced to flour, it weighed 289.3 grs. By absolute desic- 
cation in vacuo, at a temperature of 230" F. it was found that one 
of moist tuber became 0.241 ; 15.4 grs. left of ash 0.03!). 

The average quantity of azote is 1.2. In 1836, I found 1.8 of 
azote. This notable diflerence, perhaps, depends on the analysis 
not having been made immediately after the harvest ; or it may be 
partly due to meteorological influences. To convince myself that it 
did not depend upon any error of analysis, I examined anew the 
potato of 183G, preserved in the farinaceous state ; it yielded 1.8 
of azote. I shall, therefore, reckon the azote at 1.5 : 

I. II. 

Carbon 43. VJ 43.40 

Hydrogen (>.()() 5. GO 

Oxytren 44. 8H 4.i.60 

Azote T-.W 1.50 

Ash 3.yo 3.00 



ELEMENTS OF CROPS. 349 



WHEAT. 

I analyzed the grain gathered in 1837 : one of wheat, dried in 

vacuo at 230° F. was reduced to 0.885 ; one of dry wheat left of 

ash 0.0243 : 

Carbon 46.10 

Hydrogen 5.80 

Oxygen 43-40 

Azote 2.29 

Ash 2.43 

100.00 
The mean produce in wheat at Bechelbronn varies from 20^^ to 
22 bushels per acre ; this variation depends on the drill crop which 
commences the rotation. After potatoes the average crop is 19^ 
bushels ; after beet-root, 17 bushels ; on clover-breaks it is 24 bushels. 
The average weight of the grain is 63 lbs. per bushel. 

WHEAT-STRAW. 

I estimate the proportion of the produce in grain to that in straw, 
as 44 to 100. 

One of straw completely dried in vacuo at 230° F. becomes 0.740 ; 
one of dry straw leaves 0.0697 of ash : 

I. 11. 

Carbon 48.48 48.38 

Hydrogen 5.41 5.21 

Oxygen 38.79 39.09 

Azote 0.35 0-35 

Ash 6.97 69.7 

100.00 100.00 

RED CLOVER. 

Clover delights in clayey soils ; it thrives generally in good wheat 
lands ; in light and sandy ground it gets bare and frosted. During 
its growth, it always requires the shelter of some other plant. For 
this reason, in spring, it is generally sown among wheat, which is 
put in the preceding autumn, or barley sown the same spring. We 
generally give from 11 to 14 lbs. of seed per acre. Clover is mow- 
ed the second year, as it is coming into flower ; but when it is not 
to be consumed as green fodder, the mowing may take place before 
the flowering ; this is required from the difficulty of making it into 
hay. In fact, in the process of drying clover, there is great risk of 
losing part both of the leaves and flower ; besides, the drying always 
requires a considerable time, during which the clover runs the chance 
of being damaged by rain, and clover hay-making is almost im- 
practicable in wet weather. Schwertz proposed to dry the clover 
on a sort of parrot-perches stuck into the ground. These supports 
are but eight feet high, and capable of bearing a load of 2 cwt. of 
green fodder, mowed twenty-four hours, and already withered. This 
method, as I have seen it practised in the Duchy of Baden, answers 
well, but there is considerable cost for manual labor, and in the first 
instance for perches. Schwertz reckons that 2 cwts. of green clover 

30 



350 ELEMENTS OF CROPS. 

yield 48 lbs. of hay. The relation of green to dry fodder varies 
with the age of the plant, and the meteorological circumstances 
under which it has grown. Subjoined is the result of some experi- 
ments which I performed on the making of clover hay : 

1 ton of clover in flower, 2(1 ye:ir (1841) afforded in hay 7 cwts. 

1 ton of clover Ist year ( 184-2) " 4 cxvts. 2 qrs. 24 lbs. 

The average produce of this fodder reduced to hay at Bechel- 
bronn is 41 cwts. 3 qrs. per acre. 

One of clover hay, after complete desiccation, weighed 0.790 ; 

one of dry hay left 0.078 of ash : 

I. It. 

Carbon 47.53 47.10 

Hydrogen 4.69 5.33 

0.\ygen 57.90 37.66 

Azote 2.06 2.06 

Ash 7.76 7.76 

100.00 100.00 

TURNIPS. 

When turnips are cultivated as a second crop, as after rye or 
wheat, the produce is very uncertain. Attempts are occasionally 
made to raise them after wheat which has followed clover. 

When cultivated on fresh manured soil, the produce is considera- 
ble ; in some places it amounts to from 28 to 33 tons per acre ; but 
as a second crop, we only obtain upon an average 7\ tons per acre. 
This crop is only counted as a half-crop in the general produce of 
the rotation. 

Turnip is the most watery root I have examined. A slice weigh- 
ing 2 oz. 17 dwts. dried in the stove, was reduced to 4 dwts. After 
thorough desiccation, one of turnip weighed 0.075 ; consequently 
the root contains 92.5 per cent, of water ; one of dried turnip incin- 
erated, left 0.0758 of ash : 

I. II. 

Carbon 42.80 49.93 

Hydrogen 5.54 5.61 

Oxygen 42.40 42.20 

Azote 168 1.68 

Ash 7.58 7.58 

100.00 JOO.OO 

OATS. 

As this grain closes the rotation, the produce is not great. The 
average crop is 37 bushels per acre, at the weight of 33^ lbs. per 
bushel ;* one of oats completely dried weighs 0.792 ; one of dried 
oats leaves 0.0398 of ash : 

1. II. 

Carbon 50-32 51.09 

Hydrogen 6.32 6.44 

0.\ygen 37.14 36.25 

Azote 2.24 2.24 

Ash 3.98 3.98 

100.00 100.00 

* This is but a ligh< weight for a bushel of oats.— Eno. Ed. 



ELEMENTS OF CROPS. 351 

OAT STRAW. 

Oat Straw is estimated at about 15 cwts. per acre ; one part 
becomes, when dried in vacuo, 0.713 ; one part burned leaves 0.0509 
of ash : 

Carbon 49.93 50.25 

Hydrogen 5,32 5.48 

Oxygen 39.28 38.80 

Azote 0.38 0-38 

Ash 5.09 5.09 

100.00 100.00 

FIELD BEET OR MANGEL-WURZEL. 

On a freshly manured soil, the average produce of beet at Bechel- 
bronn is 10 tons, 15 cwts. 1 qr. per acre. The worst crops do not 
fall below 5 tons, 2 cwts. 1 qr. 14 lbs., and the best do not exceed 
16 tons, 7 cwts. 1 qr., results u-hich I took occasion to observe varied 
sensibly from those obtained in different places. I stated that 
Schwartz and Tliaer make the average 14 tons, 14 cwts. 2 qrs. 16 
lbs. Moelinger, after taking the mean of ten years, adopts 11 tons, 
1 cwt. 3 qrs. 6 lbs. At Roville, M. de Dombasle speaks of 7 tons, 
3 cwts. 26 lbs. as the mean of seven years. 

At Bechelbronn, the leaves of the beet are not given to cattle ; 
they are left upon the ground. A piece of beet-root weighing 1 oz. 
16 dwts. was reduced to 4;-^, say 5 dwts. after being stove dried. 
After complete desiccation, at 230° F. one part of root became 0.122 ; 
one part of root left upon incineration 0.0624 of residuum : 

Ciirhon 42.75 42.93 

Hydrogen 5.77 5.94 

O.xygen 43.58 43.33 

Azote 1.66 1.66 

Ash 6.24 6.24 

100.00 190.00 

RYE. 

Rye is seldom introduced into the rotation at Bechelbronn. They 
reckon its produce at 26 bushels per acre, when it has had a sup- 
plementary dose of manure. The bushel weighs fully 58 lbs. I 
have taken the proportion of grain to straw as 45 is to 100. One 
part of rye, dried at 230° F. weighed 0.834; one part incinerated 
left 0.0237 of ash : 

I. II. III. 

Carbon 46.35 4.5.72 46.38 

Hydrogen ••••..5.38 5.70 5.74 

Oxygen 44.21 44.52 43.82 

Azote 1.69 1.69 1.69 

Ash 2.37 2.37 2.37 



100.00 100.00 100.00 

RYE-STBAW. 



One part of straw, completely dried, weighed 0.813 ; one part of 
which, incinerated, left 0.0368 of ash : 



352 ELEMENTS OF CROl'S. 

Carbon 49.88 

Hydrogen 5.58 

Oxygen 40..')C 

Azote 0.30 

Ash 3.68 

100.00 

WHITE PEAS 

Raised on manured land yielded 16 bushels per acre, weighing 
fully 62 lbs. per bushel. One part of peas, after complete desicca- 
tion, weighed 0.914 ; one part of dried peas left of ash 0.0314 : 

I. II. 

Carbon 46.06 46.94 

Hydrogen 6.09 6.24 

Oxygen 40.53 39.50 

Azote 4.18 4.18 

Ash 3.14 3.14 

ino.oo 100.00 

PEA STRAW. 

Ohe acre of peas produces about 22 or 23 cwts. of straw ; one part 
of the straw after desiccation weighed 0.802 ; one part after incine- 
ration 0.1132: 

Carbon 45.80 

Hydrogen 5.00 

Oxygen 35.57 

Azote 2.31 

Ash 11.32 

100.00 

JERUSALEM POTATO OR ARTICHOKF:. 

In Alsace, Jerusalem artichokes are always grown on one and 
the same piece of land, which is manured every two years. At 
Bechelbronn, on a somewhat shallow soil, the produce per acre 
amounts to : 

Tubers 10 tons 

Dry stems 11 J cwts. 

A tuber which weighed on being taken from the ground 1 oz. 
15yV dwts., weighed y^ dwts. after it was dried in the stove. After 
absolute desiccation, one part was reduced to 0.208 ; one portion of 
the dry tuber left 0.0594 after incineration : 

I. II. 

Carbon 43.02 43.62 

Hydrogen 5.91 .5.80 

Oxygen 43..56 43.07 

Azote 1..57 1.57 

Ash 5.94 5.94 

100.00 100.00 

DRIED STEMS OF JERUSALE.M ARTICHOKES. 

These stems had stood through ihe winter where they grew, and 
were almost wholly composed of pith. One part after desiccation 
weighed 0.871 : one part left of ash 0.0276. 



ELEMENTS OF CHOPS. 



353 



Carbon 45.66 

Hydrogen 5.43 

Oxygen 45.72 

Azote 0.43 

Ash 2.76 

100.00 

I fear that in this analysis the carbon and azote are rated too low. 

I have collected in two tables the results of the analyses as detail- 
ed above. The first exhibits the quantity of dry matter and moisture 
contained in each specimen ; the other, the elementary composition. 
On careful examination of the numbers given in the second table, 
certain substances will be found very analogous in composition. If 
the ashes be deducted, the analogy becomes complete ; for many 
substances differing widely both in character and properties, never- 
theless appear to possess the same composition ; a fact which I do 
not undertake to explain. 

TABLE OF THE PROPORTIONS OF WATER CONTAINED IN DIFFERENT 
SUBSTANCES. 

Substances. Dry matter. Water. 

Wheat 0.855 0.145 

Rye 0.834 0166 

Oats 0.792 0.208 

Wheat-straw 0.740 0.260 

Rye-straw 0.813 0.187 

Oat-straw 0.713 0.287 

Potato 0.241 0.759 

Field-beet 0.122 0.878 

Turnip 0.075 0.925 

Jerusalem potato 0.208 0.792 

Peas 0.914 0.080 

Pea-straw 0.882 0.118 

Clover-hay 0.790 0.210 

Jerusalem potato-stems 0.871 0.129 

COMPOSITION OF THE SAME SUBSTANCES DRIED IN VACUO AT 230° 

FAHR. 



SUBSTANCES. 



Wheat 

Rye 

Oats 

Wheat- stf aw .• • 

Rye-straw 

Oat-straw 

Potato 

Field-beet 

Turnip. 

Jenisalem potato 

Peas 

Pea-straw 

Clover-hay 

Jerusalem pota- 
to-stems 



Ashes included. 



46.1 
46.2 
.50.7 
48.4 
49.9 
50.1 
44.0 
42.8 
42.9 
43.3 
46.5 
45.8 
47.4 

45.7 



05.8 
05.6 
06.4 
05.3 
05.6 
05.4 
05.8 
05.8 
05.5 
05.8 
06.2 
05.0 
05.0 

05.4 



43.4 
44.2 
36.7 
38.9 
40.6 
39.0 
44.7 
43.4 
42.3 
43.3 
40.0 
35.6 
37.8 

45.7 



02.3 
01.7 
02.2 
00.4 
00.3 
00.4 
01.5 
01.7 
01.7 
01.6 
04.2 
02.3 
02.1 



02.4 
02.3 
04.0 
07.0 
03.6 
05.1 
04.0 
06.3 
07.6 
06-0 
03.1 
11.3 
07.7 



00.4 02.8 



30* 



Ashes deducted. 



47.2 
47.3 
52.9 
52.1 
51.8 
52.8 
45.9 
45.7 
46.3 
46.0 
48.0 
51.5 
51. 3 



06.0 
05.7 
06.6 
05.7 
05.8 
05.7 
06.1 
06.2 
06.0 
06.2 
06.4 
05.6 
05.4 



47.0 05.6 47.0 



44.4 
45.3 

38.2 
41.8 
42.1 
41.1 
46.4 
46.3 
45.9 
46.1 
41.3 
40.3 
41.1 



02.4 
01.7 
02.3 
00.4 
00.3 
00.4 
01.6 
01.8 
01.8 
01.7 
04.3 
02.6 
02.2 

00.4 



354 £L£IVI£NTS OF MANURE. 

RELATIONS OF MANURES TO CROPS. 

The manure employed at Bechelbronn is what is commonly called 
farm-yard dung, a compost made up of the excrements of horses, 
oxen, and straw litter impregnated with urine. The dung of fowls 
and pigeons, and the sweepings of tiie yard, are sometimes applied 
to special purposes. The animals whose excrements form the dung 
which I have examined were horses, oxen, and swine. 

The manure is put upon the ground when it has undergone fer- 
mentation in the heap : it is manure half-made : the straw litter is 
not entirely decomposed, but is soft and filamentous ; in this state 
manure retains a great deal of moisture. 

DESICCATION OF HALF-MADE OR HALF-DECAYED MANURE. 
EXPERIMENT I. 

A quantity of manure prepared during the winter of 1837-1838, 
which in the state in which it was being put on the ground, weighed 
257 lb& after it had been dried so as to be easily reduced to powder, 
weighed 57 lbs. The loss of water was therefore about 77.3 in 100. 
This number comes very near the estimate of several German 
agriculturists, who reckon the moisture in farm-yard dung at 75 per 
cent. Still this loss does not represent the whole of the water ; for 
after desiccation at 212° F. the 57 lbs. weighed 54 lbs. In fine, 
after desiccation in vacuo, at 230° F. it was found that one part of 
stove-dried manure lost 0.039. Thus the manure parted in totality 
with 79.62 per cent, of water, and contained in consequence 20.4 of 
dry substance. 

EXPERIMENT II. 

Of the manure prepared in the winter of 1838-1839, 220 lbs. after 
being chopped and dried weighed 56 lbs. One part of this manure 
was reduced in dry vacuo at a temperature of 230° F. to 0.872. The 
220 lbs. would therefore have weighed when dry 48 lbs. 

EXPERIMENT HI. 

Of the manure prepared during the summer of 1839, 660 lbs. 
weighed after desiccation 151 lbs. ; of this dry manure reduced to 
powder, one part lost by desiccation in vacuo at 230° F. 0.1461. 

The 151 lbs. would therefore have lost 22 lbs. ; consequently the 
660 lbs. of manure contained 129 lbs. of dry matter, that is, 19.64 
per cent. 

Subjoined is a summary of the per centage of dry matter : 

First experiment 20.4 

fecond " '22.2 

Third " 19.r. 

Avenge 20.7 

Moisture (average) 79.3 

ANALYSES OF HALF-MADE JIANURES. 

I. Manure prepared during the winter of 1837-1838 : 

Matter 0..5595, gave carbonic acid 0.528, water 0.157 : C. 32.4, H. 3.8, 
Azote 1.7.— 1.0 gave ashes 0.462. 



ELEMENTS OF MANURE. 355 

II. Manure prepared during the winter of 1837-1838 : 

Matter 0.575, gave carbonic acid 0.676, water 0.212 : C 32.5, H. 4.1, 
Azote 1.69.— 1.000 gave ashes 0.357. 

III. Manure prepared during the winter of 1837-1838 : 

Matter 0.567. gave carbonic acid 0.791, water 0.232 : C. 38.7, H. 4.5, 
Azote 1.73.— 1.000 gave ashes 0.264. 

IV. Manure prepared during the spring of 1838 : 
Matter 0.586, gave carbonic acid 0.759, water 0.208 : C. 36.4, H. 4.0, 

Azote 2.4.-1.000 gave ashes 0.381. 

V. Manure prepared during the spring of 1839 : 
Matter 0.445, gave carbonic acid 0.643, water 0.171 : C. 40.0, H. 4.3, 

Azote 2.4.— 1.000 gave ashes 0.257. 

VI. 

Matter 0.427, gave carbonic acid 0.543, water 0.150 : C. 34.7, H, 3.9. 
•' 0.427, " " 0.530, " 0.127 : " 34.3, " 4.8, 

Azote 2.0.— 1.000 gave ashes 0.315. 

COMPOSITION OF THE MANURES ANALYZED. 

Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Azote. Salts and earths. 

I. 32.4 3.8 25.8 1.7 36.5 

II. 32.5 4.1 26.0 1.7 35.7 

III. 38.7 4.5 28.7 1.7 26.4 

IV. 36.4 4.0 19.1 2.4 38.1 
V. 40.0 4.3 27.6 2.4 25.7 

VI. 34.5 4.3 27.7 2.0 31.5 

Mean . , . 35.8 4.2 25.8 2.0 32.2 

In all these analyses, the combustion was promoted by the addi- 
tion of chlorate of potash ; some oxide of antimony was likewise 
added. The carbonic acid of the ash was determined and struck off. 

The measure of dung in use at Bechelbronn is the wagon drawn 
by four horses. After repeated weighings it was found that this 
measure contains nearly 1 ton, 15 cwts. 2 qrs. 23 lbs. of moist material, 
or 7 cwt. 1 qr. 15 lbs. if that be computed dry. The first course of 
the rotation receives 27 loads of this manure, weighing about 48 tons, 
14 qrs. 5 lbs., equivalent to 9 tons, 19 cwts. qr. 2 lbs. of dry ma- 
nure.* 

The preceding analyses show that this charge of manure, which 
is to fertilize the soil during the course of the rotation (five years) 
contains : 

Carbon 8027 lbs. 

Hydrogen 925 

Oxygen 5767 

Azote 447 

Salts and earth 7188 

;S355 

Such are the principles which together form the organic matter 
that is to be consumed and in major part assimilated by the crops 

* I presume that the quantity above specified is that which is laid on the French 
hectare, equal to 2.4 acres English. To get at the quantity laid on per acre, it would 
therefore be necessary to divide by 2 4-10 : Thus 48 tons, 14 cwts. 5 lbs. per hectare 
will be equal to 20 tons, 1 cwt. 3 qrs. per English acre— Eno. Ea. 



356 RELATIONS OF ELEMENTS 

grown. I say partly, because I do not believe that the whole or- 
ganic matter necessarily enters into tlie constitution of the plants 
■which spring up during the rotation ; no doubt a considerable por- 
tion of the manure is lost through spontaneous decomposition, or is 
carried away by the rain ; and another portion may remain a long 
time dormant in the soil, to act as a fertilizer at a more or less dis- 
tant period ; just as in the present rotation the manure formerly in- 
troduced co-operates with that recently added. One thing is certain, 
viz., that the proportion of manure indicated is essential for average 
crops ; by diminishing it the produce is necessarily lessened. Last- 
ly, it is proved that after the rotation the crops have consumed the 
manure, and the earth will not yield its increase unless a fresh quan- 
tity be added. 

I now proceed to consider the relation subsisting between the 
quantity of organic matter buried in the soil as manure, and what is 
recovered in the crops. In this way the respective proportions of 
elementary matter which various crops derived from the air and the 
soil, may be determined approximately, and a knowledge obtained 
of those rotations which least exhaust the land, or in lother words, 
which obtain from the atmosphere the largest amount of organic 
matter. 

The rotations set down in Tables I. and II. are those definitively 
adopted at Bechelbronn, and throughout the greater part of Alsace. 
These two rotations, which differ only in the hoed crop introduced, 
potatoes in one, beet-root in the other, are almost identical ; nearly 
the same quantity of dry matter being produced per acre, and nearly 
the same quantity of organic material withdrawn from the atmo- 
sphere. 

The rotation No. 3 was introduced by Schwartz at Hohenheim ; 
theoretically, it is one of the most advantageous ; it was tried at 
Bechelbronn but abandoned, because, from meteorological causes, 
peas and vetches tail frequently. 

Tat)le No. 4, shows the triennial rotation with manured fallow ; 
this is disadvantageous in point of theory. The organic consti- 
tuents of the crop exceed but little those of the manure. Suppos- 
ing that even the whole of the straw were converted into manure, 
the farmer would still be compelled to procure manure from abroad, 
in compensation for the out-going of wheat. It is thus obvious why 
triennial rotation always requires a great deal of meadow land. 

In table No. 5, the result of the continuous cultivation of Jerusa- 
lem artichokes is given. At Bechelbronn these are dressed every 
two years with about ten loads of dung per acre. Upon an average 
20 tons of tubers and about 2 tons of woody steins arc gathered in 
the course of tsvo years. It will be perceived from perusal of this 
table, that tiie culture of Jerusalem articbokes presents, theoretical- 
ly, considerable advantages. The organic matter of the crop greatly 
exceeds that of the manure. Moreover, in Alsace, where it is very 
common, it is held to be most productive. Still, the organic matter 
of the stems must be taken into account, which, practically speak- 
ing, are nearly worthless. 



IN CROPS AND MANURE. 



357 



Table No. 6 comprises the data relative to a quadrennial rotation, 
adopted by M. Crud, and in which are grown successively : 1st. 
Potatoes or beet-root. 2d. Wheat. 3d. Red clover. 4th. Wheat. 
The first sowing is dressed with about 18 tons of half- wasted farm- 
yard dung. The gain in organic matter obtained by this rotation 
surpasses that of the preceding ; but as the clover crops are not very 
sure when repeated every four years, M. Crud, for reasons which 
may be called in question, follows this rotation with one of lucern, 
which gets a fresh supply of manure. It cannot be denied that lu- 
cern furnishes a great mass of fodder, and in this respect the fertili- 
ty of the land ought to be vastly enhanced, were this consumed on 
the spot ; but I can discover no objection to the renewal of clover, 
if the lucern succeeds so well as M. Crud says it does. From too 
frequent repetition, farmers have gone into the opposite extreme of 
cultivating clover only every five or six years. This subject offers 
an important field for research. It is not impossible that the ill- 
success depends often on premature mowing of the clover during 
the first year, and before its roots have acquired sufficient vigor. 
This practice has been abandoned with us for some years, and there 
is now every thing to assure us that the second year's crop is there- 
by secured. 

ROTATION COURSE No. 1. 



Yeais. 


Substances. 


Crops 
per acre. 


Crops 
dry. 


Carbon. 


Hydro- 
gen. 


Oxygen. 


Azote. 


Salt5 

and 

earths. 


1st 

2d 

3(1 
4th 

5th 


Potatoes . . . 
Wheat . . . 
VV^heat-straw . 
Clover-huy . . 
Wheat . . . 
Wheat-straw . 
Turnips (2d crop) 
Oats .... 




lbs. 
11733 
1231 

2798 
4675 
1521 
3456 
8754 
1233 
1650 


lbs. 
2828 
1052 
2070 
3693 
1300 
2557 
656 
975 
1176 


lbs. 
1244 

485 
1002 
1750 

599 
1237 
2832 

494 

593 


lbs. 

164 
61 

110 

185 
75 

135 
36 
62 
63 


lbs. 

12fr4 
457 
805 

1396 
564 
995 
278 
358 
458 


lbs. 
42 
24 

8 
78 
30 
10 
11 
21 

5 


lbs. 

113 
25 

145 

284 
31 

179 
50 
39 
60 


Oat-straw . . 
Total .... 


37050 
4495 


16307 
9314 


10236 
3426 


891 
391 


6575 
2403 


229 
185 


926 
2999 


Manure employed 


Difference . . 






6993 


6810 


500 


4172 


44 


2073 



ROTATION COURSE No. 2. 



Years. 


Substances. 


Crops 
per acre. 


Crops 
dry. 


Carbon. 


Hydro, 
gen. 


Oxygen. 


Azote. 


Salts 

and 

earths. 


1st 
2d 

3d 
4th 

5th 


Mangel wurzel 
Wheat . . . 
Wheat-straw . 
Clover-hay . . 
Wheat . . . 
Wheat-straw . 
Turnips . . . 
Oats .... 




lbs. 
2383 
1086 
2468 
11675 
1520 
^456 
8754 
1232 
1650 


lbs. 
2907 
928 
1827 
3693 
1300 
2557 
655 
975 
1176 


lbs. 

1244 
428 
883 

1749 
599 

1237 
281 
495 
589 


lbs. 

157 
53 
98 

185 
75 

135 
36 
62 
63 


lbs. 

1262 
403 
710 

1396 
564 
995 
277 
358 
458 


lbs. 
49 
21 

7 
77 
30 
10 
11 
21 

5 


lbs. 

182 
22 

128 

284 
31 

179 
5U 
39 
60 


Oat-straw . . 


Total 

Manure employed 


27224 
4495 


1G018 
9314 


7505 
3426 


864 
391 


6423 
2403 


231 
185 


975 
2999 


Difference . . 






6704 


4079 1 473 


4020 


46 


2024 



35a 



KELATIO.NS OK ELEMENTS. 



ROTATION COURSE No. 3. 



Yean. 


Substances. 


Crops 
per acre. 


Crops 

dry. 


Carbon. 


Hydro, 
gen. 


Oxygen. 


Azote. 


Salts 

and 

earths. 






lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


l?t 


Potntoes .... 


11733 


2828 


1244 


164 


1264 


42 


113 


2d 


Wheat .... 


1231 


1054 


485 


61 


457 


24 


25 




Wheat-straw . . 


2;98 


2070 


1002 


110 


805 


8 


145 


3d 


Clover.hay . . . 


4675 


3693 


1750 


185 


1396 


78 


284 


4lh 


Wheat .... 


1515 


1300 


599 


75 


564 


30 


31 




Wheat.straw . . 


34.')6 


2.558 


1238 


ia5 


995 


10 


179 




Turnips .... 


8;»i 


656 


282 


36 


278 


11 


50 


5th 


Peas (dunged) . . 


lOUl 


915 


425 


56 


366 


38 


28 




Pea-straw . . . 


2558 


2256 


1033 


112 


803 


52 


255 


fith 


Rye 


1539 


1278 


590 


71 


565 


22 


30 




Rye.straw . . . 
Total 


3420 


2780 


1387 


155 


1129 


8 


100 


148280 


213S8 


10035 


1160 


8«22 


323 


1240 




Manure employed 
Diflerence . . . 


148285 


11176 


4CI00 


470 


2883 


223 


3599 




10212 


6035 


690 


5739 


100 


2359 



ROTATION COURSE No. 4. 



Years. 


Substances. 


Crops Crops 
per acre. dry. 


Carbon. 


Hydro, 
gen. 


Oxygen. 


Azote. 


SalU 

and 

earths. 


1st 

2d&3d 


Dunged fallow . . 
Wheat .... 
Straw 

Total 

Manure employed 

Difference . . . 


lbs. lbs. 

mi 2tio6 

6875 5080 


lbs. 

95i 

2462 


lbs. 

150 
270 


lbs. 

1128 
19,9 


lbs. 

'60 
20 


lbs. 

'62 
356 


9916 7680 
18330 3795 


3413 

1358 


420 
159 


3107 
979 


80 
76 


418 
1222 


8414 3885 


2055 


261 


2128 


4 


804 



No, 5, CONTINUOUS POTATO CROPS. 



Yean. 


Substances. 


Crops 
per acre. 


Crops 
dry. 


Carbon. 


Hydro. 

gen. 


Oxygen. 


Azote. 


Suits 

and 

earths. 


l3t&.2d 


Potatoes .... 
Stalks .... 

Total 

Manure employed . 

Difference . . . 


lbs. 
48173 
25850 


lbs. 

I0U83 

22497 


lbs. 
4366 
10289 


lbs. 
585 
1215 


lbs. 
4366 
10289 


lbs. 
161 
90 


1I.S. 

i;05 

tioO 


74323 
41663 


32580 
8624 


14655 1800 
3087 362 


UUTa 
2225 


251 
172 


i2a5 

2777 




23956 


11568 1 1438 


12430 


79 


1542 



No. 6, QUATRENNIAL ROTATION, ADOPTED BV M. CRUD. 



Years. 


Crops grown. 






ELEMENTARY INGREDIENTS OF THE CROP. 


Crops 
per acre. 


Crops 
dry. 


Carbon. 


Hydro, 
gen. 


Oxygen. 


Salts 
Azote. and 
earths. 


Ist 

2d &4tli 

3d 


Half acre of potatoes 
Ditto of beet. routs . 
Wheat, 153 bushels . 
Wheut.slraw . . . 
Clover three cutting! 

Total 

Manure consumed . 

Difibrenee .... 


lbs. 
9167 

18333 
3331 
7333 
7333 


lbs. 
2209 
2237 
2847 
5243 
5793 


lbs. 

mi 

957 
1312 
2537 
2746 


lbs. 
128 
130 
165 
278 
290 


lbs. 
987 
970 
1235 
2040 
2190 


lbs. 
33 
38 
65 
21 
121 


lbs. 

88 
141 

68 
347 
446 


45497 
40333 


18329 8i24 
SH9 2989 


991 
a50 


7422 
2154 


278 
167 


1110 

2688 




9980 5535 


641 


5268 


111 1 1578 1 



IN CROPS AND MANURE. 



359 



3 


Dry manure 




Dry produce 




Gain in organ- 




.2 


expended upon 


Azote con- 


obtained in 


Alole con- 


ic matter in 


Gain in azote 


s 


one acre in 


tained in the 


one year upon 


tained in the 


one year upon 


in one year 


Pi 


one year. 


manure. 


one acre. 


produce. 


one acre. 


upon one acre. 




lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


No. 1 


18G2 


37 


3261 


46 


1996 


9 


No. 2 


1862 


37 


3204 


46 


1746 


9 


No. 3 


1862 


37 


3564 


54 


2513 


17 


No. 4 


1247 


23 


2567 


26 


1565 


3 


No. 5 


3710 


86 


16299 


125 


12758 


39 


No. 6 


2087 


42 


4582 


70 


2889 


28 



From all that precedes, it is obvious that rotations which include 
trefoils, red clover, lucern, and sainfoin, are those that afford con- 
siderably the largest proportion of organic matter ; a fact, indeed, 
which if not legitimately established, has still been long acted on 
in that system of cropping which embraces forage plants as an ele- 
ment. Lucerns, too, when they have taken kindly, yield an extra- 
ordinary quantity of forage, as every one may see by turning to the 
produce of the piece under that crop which in the system of M.Crud 
succeeds the quatrennial rotation. At the end of his rotation, M.Crud 
always lays on manure in the ratio of 18 tons per acre, which lasts 
for six years, and may be said to suffice for the succession of crops 
in the appended table : 



Crops. Produce per acre. 

Lucem dry, 1st year 3080 lbs. 

2d year 9240 

3d year 114.58 

4th year 9240 

" Sthyear... 7333 

Wheat, 6th year 1448 

Straw 3645 



Contents in azott. 

72 lbs. 
215 



213 
172 



Dung employed 



Total gain in azote 

Gain in azote per annum and per acre 



.40233 



980 
205 



.775 
.130 



In glancing at these tables, it is obvious that the azote of the crop 
always exceeds the azote of the manure. Generally speaking, I 
admit that this excess of azote is derived from the atmosphere : but 
I do not pretend'to'say in what precise manner the assimilation takes 
place. I shall only quote the conclusion of a paper which I published 
on the subject in the year 1837.* Azote may enter immediately into 
the constitution of vegetables, provided their green parts have the 
power of fixing it ; azote may also enter vegetables dissolved in the 
water which bathes their roots, and which always contains it in a 
certain proportion. Lastly, it is possible that the air may contain 
an infinitely minute quantity of ammoniacal vapor, as some natural 

* Annalon de Cliimie, t. Ixix. p. 366. 



360 RELATIONS OK ELEMENTS 

philosophers* have maintained, and that this assimilated, decom- 
posed, and recomposed anew by the plant, is the source of its azotized 
constituents. 

^ 2. OF THE RESIDUES OF DIFFERENT CROPS. 

The vegetable matter which is produced in the course of a season 
is never found entirely in the crop. A certain quantity of it, for 
instance, always remains in tlie ground. It is, therefore, a point of 
interest to ascertain what quantity of elementary matter is left in thfe 
soil after each kind of crop in the rotation ; precise knowledge of 
this description may even be important in calculating rotations, for 
it is obvious that the remains of the crop now on the ground must 
influence that which is to follow, and in the course of a rotation the 
sum of the residuary matters must be regarded as a supjdement or 
addition to the manure put into the ground at its commencement. 

In the systems of rotation very generally followed at the present 
time, the iniiaenoe of these residuary matters is manifest, and it is 
partly by their means that we can explain how'a quantity of manure, 
frequently very moderate, should suffice for the whole of the crops 
in a productive rotation. Tlie remarkable etlect of clover has not 
failed to arrest attention even from the most unobserving. The 
wheat crop which comes after our drill crop in Alsace, beet or 
potatoes, averages from 18 to 20 bushels per acre ; but the wheat 
crop that succeeds our clover averages from 23 to 24 bushels per 
acre. 

The improvement of the soil, so obvious in connection with clover, 
in all probability also occurs in connection with the residues of other 
crops ; but as in most instances the residue merely compensates the 
loss, or lessens its extent, the effect produced is less remarkable, 
and is less, indeed, in amount. All the world acknowledge, then, 
• that the residues of the crops that enter into a rotation compensate 
in greater or less degree for what is carried away in the shape of 
harvest, and that in some cases they even add to the fertility of the 
soil ; for in growing crops that leave a large quantity of residue, it 
is precisely as if a smaller quantity were taken from a given extent 
of surface. But what is the amount of residue or refuse which is 
returned to the soil by such and such a crop ? What, in a word, is 
the value of this residuary matter considered as manure 1 This is 
a point upon which only the most vague and indefinite ideas are 
generally entertained ; and it was with the purpose of substituting 
positive facts for mere guesses, that I determined on weighing and 
analyzing the vegetable residue of the several crops that enter as 
elements into our more usual rotations. 

My experiments were made upon breadths of land which varied 
from 120 to 500 square yards in extent. The clover roots and 
stubble were taken up with the spade, and before being dried, were 
freed from adhering earth by washing. The beet-leaves and pota- 
to-tops were dried at once in the oven ; and it was from each of the 

* Saussure Recherches Chimiques, and Liebig, AEriciiltural Chemistry. 



IN CROPS AND MANURE. 36 

general masses reduced to powder that samples were taken for ulti- 
mate analysis, before proceeding to which, they were carefully dried 
in vacuo at 230° F. 

It is not likely that any accurate mean result should have been 
come to from an examination of the produce of a single season. I 
should even say that the year in which these inquiries were under- 
taken was little favorable to them, inasmuch as the crops were gen- 
erally bad ; but it is obvious that they form a nucleus, around or by 
the side of .which the results of other seasons may be arranged, and 
an average from larger premises come to. 

POTATO TOPS OR HAUM. 

A piece of land measuring 120 square yards, marked off from a 
spot that had suffered from drought, yielded 47.0 lbs. of green tops, 
which were reduced by drying to 18.4 lbs. A similar extent of 
surface, selected from a part of the field that looked well, gave green 
tops 79 lbs., which dried in the air were reduced to 16 lbs. We 
should thus have 23 1 cwts. of green, and 6| cwts. of dry tops per 
acre. The crop of potatoes in 1839 yielded at the rate of 101|^ 
cvi'ts. per acre. One hundred grammes, or 3' oz. 4 dwts. 8 grs. 
troy, of the top dried in the air, lost 12 grammes, or 7 dwts. 17 grs. 
by thorough drying at 230° F. The weight of the tops yielded per 
acre, taken as dry, consequently amounts to 5 cwts. 2 qrs. 14 lbs., 
and by elementary analysis they were found to have the following 
composition : 

Carbon 44.8 

Hydrogen 5.1 

Oxygen 30.5 

Azote 2.3 

Salts and earths 17.8 

100.0 
LEAVES OF FIELD-BEET, OR MANGEL-WURZEL. 

Upon a surface of 500 square yards, 976 lbs. of leaves were gath- 
ered, the weight being taken two days after the roots were pulled up. 

55 lbs. of leaves reducible to powder by drying in an oven, were 
brought to 6.6 lbs. 

3 oz. 4 dwts. of leaves dried and pulverized, lost by desiccation 
at 230° F. 3} dwts. of moisture. The 6.6 lbs. brought to that state 
of dryness would have weighed 6. 1 lbs. With these data it is found 
that the 976 lbs. of green leaves gathered upon 500 square yards 
would have weighed when dry 108.9 lbs. ; and that the acre produced 
85j cwts. of green and 9j cwts. of dry leaves. The crop of roots 
which answers to that quantity of leaves, was in 1839 but 6 tons, 2 
cwts., that is to say, little more than half a crop ; for our average 
is about 10^ tons. 

COMPOSITION OF DRY LEAVES. . 

Carbon 38.1 

Hydrogen 5.1 

Oxygen 30.8 

Azote 4.5 

Salts and earths 21.5 

100.0 
31 



362 ORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 



WHEAT STUBBLE. 

From 120 square yards of ground we have obtained 13 lbs. of 
stubble dried in the air. The same surface in another field produced 
17i lbs. 

Thus we have 5} cwts. of stubble per acre ; but as wheat recurs 
twice in the rotation, the residues must be doubled ; say, IH cwts. 
Stubble loses 0.26 of moisture when dried completely at 230°. 

In 1839, the wheat after the drilled crop, or after clover, was only 
17 bushels per acre. 

I have assigned to stubble the same composition as that of straw. 

CLOVER ROOTS. 

A surface of 120 square yards gave 44 lbs. of roots, weighed after 
being thoroughly dried in the sun ; when pulverized after drying in 
the stove the weight was reduced to 37 lbs. 

3 oz. 4 dwts. of powdered roots lost by drying, at a temperature 
of 230° F., 5 dwts. of moisture. Thus the 44 lbs. of roots dried in 
the sun would have weighed 34 lbs., and one acre would have 
furnished 12j cwts. of residue perfectly dry. 

In 1839, the clover crop when reduced to hay was far below the 
average. 

COMPOSITION OF THE ROOTS. 

Carbon 434 

Hydrogen 5.3 

Oxygen 36.9 

Azote 1.8 

Salts and earth 12.6 



100.0 



OAT STUBBLE. 



The residue of the oat crop, which concludes the rotation course, 
does not act upon the present, but on the next rotation ; in the same 
way as the organic remains left in the ground by the oats which ter- 
minated the antecedent course, exerted their influence upon the 
present one. In 1839, the oat crop was above the average ; it was 
as high as 16 cwts. 2 qrs. 18 lbs. per acre. 

One French are of the land, equal to 120 square yards English, 
yielded 20 lbs. of stubble dried in the air, or at the rate in round 
numbers of 8 cwts. per acre. 

In the following table I have given a summary of the results above 
stated, combining therewith the quantity and the composition of the 
manure expended in the rotation. 



URUANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 



363 



SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING RESULTS. 







^ 


d 




^c '1 . 


Elementary matter of the residues. 








lib 
















Nature of 


f,-:s 




Nature cf the 


S = S I^-o 


















^ 




the crop. 






resiiluei buried 
in lite soil. 


Resiili 

tained 

one u 

Residue 
at 110 


1 

O 




c 
O 


o 
< 








Ihs. 


lbs 




lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs 


lbs 


lbs. 


lbs 


lbs. 




Potatoes . 


11 ;w 


iim 


Potntoe tops . 


2tf32 


630 


282 


.S2 


189 


14 


112 




Beetroots . 


13678 


1IW< 


Beetroot leaves 


9599 


lO/O 


410 




330 


48 


236 




Wheat . . 


'/.m 


mi; 


Stubble. . . . 


1283 


950 


46(1 


50 


369 


4 


67 


Clover-liay 


SMCi 


IKtd 


Roots dried in 


















Oau. . . . 


i8ta 


1474 


the sun . . . 


1833 


I4IH 


615 


75 


523 


26 


178 










Stubble .... 


836 


b96 


299 


:■« 


232 


« 


30 




Total . . . 

Manure 
employod 


81349 


9527 




















16182 4664 


2066 


244 


1643 


94 


617 




44995 








9314 


3335 


391 


2403 


186 


2995 



It therefore appears that the refuse or residue of the several crops 
of a rotation represent, both in quantity and nature, somewhat 
less than one half of the manure originally put into the ground; I 
say somewhat less, because it must be remembered that in the sum 
of these residuary matters, the beetroot leaves and potato tops must 
not be allowed to stand together, the one crop naturally excluding 
the other, or at all events the two hoed or drilled crops not entering 
in this proportion into the same rotation. 

The large quantity of organic matter restored to the soil by several 
ol" the crops in the series, consequently explains how the rotation 
may be closed without its being found indispensable to supply any 
additional manure in its course. It seems indubitable that without 
this addition of elementary matter, the fertility of the soil would 
decline much more rapidly than it does ; the residue of each crop is 
nothing more than a portion of the cropitself restored to the ground ; 
it is as if we only carried off one portion, the larger portion of the 
crop, and buried another portion green. 

In the five years' rotation, it may be observed that there are two 
crops, the hoed crop and the forage crop, which yield substances to 
the ground that are both abundant in quantity and rich in azotized 
matter, and it is unquestionable that these crops act favorably on the 
cereals which succeed them. But data are wanting for the appre- 
ciation of their specific utility in the general rotation. We see, for 
instance, that despite the large proportion of residuary matter left by 
the beet or mangel-wurzel, this plant lessens considerably the pro- 
duce of the wheat crop that comes after it. The potato, though it 
leaves much less refuse than the beet, seems nevertheless to act less 
unfavorably than this vegetable. Clover leaves more residue than 
the potato, and on this ground, alone, ought to favor the cereal that 
follows it ; but it has a favorable influence out of all proportion with 
its quantity, contrasting this with the residue of either of the hoed 
crops ; a fact from which we learn that the visible appreciable influ- 
ence of the residuary matters of preceding crops, upon the luxuriance 
of succeeding crops, does not result solely from their mass, even 
supposing ear^ to be possessed of equal qualities ; this other, this 



364 INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 

additional effect, depends especially on an influence exerted on the 
soil by the crops which leave them. Had these crops been power- 
fully exhausting, we should expect that their refuse or residue, how- 
ever considerable in quantity, could do no more than lessen the 
amount of exhaustion produced ; in which case, its useful influence, 
however real, would pass unnoticed, were it estimated by the produce 
of the succeeding crop. If, on the contrary, a crop has been but 
slightly scourging, whether in consequence of the smallness of its 
quantity, or because it may have derived from the air the major part 
of its constituent elements, the useful influence of the residue will 
not fail to be conspicuous. When the relative value of diiferent sys- 
tems of rotation is discussed in the way we have done, we in fact 
estimate the value of the elementary matter derived from the atmo- 
sphere by an aggregate of crops ; but the procedure generally fol- 
lowed is silent when the question is to assign to each crop in 
particular the special share which it has had in the total profit. To 
reply to this question, of which a knowledge of the various residues 
is one of the elements, we must first ascertain the quantity of ele- 
mentary matter supplied by the soil and the atmosphere, with refer- 
ence to each of the crops which enter into the rotation ; in other 
words, the same investigations must be undertaken in reference to 
each plant considered by itself, that have been made in reference to 
the series collectively. There is unquestionable room, in this direc- 
tion, for an important series of experiments. 

§ 3. OF THE INORGANIC SUBSTANCES OF MANURES AND CROPS. 

We have but just considered the organic matter developed in a 
series of successive harvests. To complete the study of rotations, 
to the extent at least that this can be done in the present state of 
science, we have still to e.xamine the relations that may exist between 
the mineral substances which enter into the constitution of the pro- 
duce, and those that make part of the manure given. 

We have already shown in a general way that certain mineral 
salts, certain saline matters or salifiable bases, are essential to the 
constitution of vegetables. To the best of my knowledge, no seed 
has yet been met with that is without a phosphate ; and it is now 
known that the alkaline salts powerfully promote vegetation. 

Such is their ascertained influence, indeed, that tobacco, barley, 
and buckwheat sown in soils absolutely without organic matter, but 
containing saline substances, and only moistened with distilled water, 
produced perfect plants, which flowered and fruited, and yielded ripe 
seeds.* Whence it follows, that the presence of saline matter fa- 
vors remarkably the assimilation of the azote of the atmosphere 
during the act of vegetation. 

The importance of considering rotations in connection with the 
inorganic substances tha'. are assimilated by plants was perfectly 
well known to Davy. "The exportation of grain from a country 
which receives nothing in exchange that can be turned into manure, 
must exhaust the soil in the long run," says the illustrious chemist • 
♦ Liebig, in Journ. de Phnrniacic, vol. iv., 3(1 series, p. 94. 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 365 

who ascribed to this cause the present sterility of various parts of 
Northern Africa and of Asia Minor, as well as of Sicily, which for 
a long succession of years was the granary of Italy. Rome un- 
questionably contains in its catacombs quantities of phosphorus from 
all the countries of the earth. 

Professor Liebig, in insisting with the greatest propriety on the 
useful part played by alkaline bases and saline matters in vegetation, 
has shown the necessity of taking inorganic substances into serious 
consideration in discussing rotations. It is long since I came to the 
same conclusion myself; but it strikes me, that to be truly profitable, 
such a discussion must necessarily rest on analyses of the ashes of 
plants which have grown in the same soil, and been manured with 
the same dung, the contents of which in mineral elements were al- 
ready known. There is in fact a kind of account current to be es- 
tablished between the inorganic matter of the crop and that of the 
manure. Although I give every credit to the fidelity of the analyses 
of vegetable ashes that have been published up to the present time, 
I have not felt myself at liberty to make use of any of them in the 
direction which I now indicate. I have not thought that it would be 
fair or reasonable to contrast such heterogeneous compounds, as the 
ashes of plants grown at Geneva and Paris, under such dissimilar 
circumstances, with those of vegetables produced on a farm of Al- 
sace, where the point to be explained, through the results of this 
contrast, had reference to a particular series of agricultural phenom- 
ena. And then my business was not merely with the scientific ques- 
tion ; the manufacturing or commercial element in the consideration 
also touched me. I had to ascertain how I was likely to stand at 
some future time, did I presume to act upon the conclusions to which 
I came. There was nothing for me therefore but to analyze the 
ashes' of the several vegetables which entered as elements into the 
rotation followed at Bechelbronn, but confining my inquiries to that 
portion of the vegetable which is looked upon particularly as the 
crop, so much of the plant as remains on the ground and is turned in 
again, of course taking nothing from it. 

The ashes examined were almost all from the crops of 1841, two 
analyses having generally been made of each substance : and here 
I ought to say, that in this long and tedious labor, in which I spent 
nearly a whole year, I was most ably seconded by Mr. Letellier. By 
way of preface, I should say that in these analyses, losses will fre- 
quently be apparent, which for the most part exceed the limits that 
in the present day are tolerated in the more careful operations of the 
laboratory. These deficiencies, which puzzled me a good deal at 
first, I by and by discovered to proceed from the difficulty of incin- 
erating certain vegetable substances completely. When they abound 
in alkaline salts, they leave ashes that melt so readily, that it becomes 
difficult to prevent their agglutination, and the charcoal that is not 
consumed is then effectually protected against any further action of 
the fire. There is nothing for it in such cases but to incinerate at 
the lowest temperature possible, and then a little moisture is apt to 
be left; the charcoal, however, is the substance that occasions the 

31* 



366 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 



main difficulty, and the more important loss. To quote one of the 
instances, that of wheat, where the loss or deficiency is as high as 
24 per cent. I may say that a direct inquiry after charcoal brought 
it out equal to 2, by which the actual deficiency is reduced to 0.4. 
I have not, however, introduced any correction for carbon, but pre- 
sent the reader with the results as they actually presented them- 
selves to me. Among the number of the products of the analyses, 
alumina figures beside the oxide of iron. Alumina is an earth which 
I have always met with in minimum quantity in the aslies of plants, 
and is perhaps accidental ; it may proceed from the earth which ad- 
heres to all herbaceous plants, and from which it is so difficult to 
free them completely. 

COMPOSITION OF THE ASHES PROCEEDING FROM THE PLANTS GROWN 
AT BECHELBRONN. 





Acids. 


















Suhstances which 




..1 ,,.• 


4) 


5 


£ 


1 


d 


si 


E 3 i 

5| 


yielded the ashes. 


^1 


Sul. 
phurie 

Phos 
phori 


5 


13 


« 


M 


m 


•Si 


Potatoes .... 


13.4 


7.1 11.3 


2.7 


l.S 


5.4 


,51.5 


traces 


R.fi 


5 


0.7 


Mnngel-wurzel 






IH.I 


i.e 6.1 


,').2 


v.o 


4.4 


39.0 


6.0 


8.0 


2 5 


4.2 


Turnips . . 






14.(1 


10.9 6.0 


2.9 


10.9 


4.3 


Xi.l 


4.1 


6.4 


1 2 


5.5 


Potato tops . 






11. U 


2.2 10.8 


1.6 


2.3 


1.8 


44.5 


traces 


13.0 


5 2 


7.6 


Wheat. . . 






0.0 


1.0147.0 


traces 


2.9 


l.i.9 


29,5 


traces 


1.3 





2.4 


Wheat-straw 






(1.0 


1.0! 3.1 


(I.K 


H.h 


5.0 


9,2 


(13 


67.6 


1 


3.7 


Oats . . . 






1.7 


1.0 14.9 


().,■> 


3 7 


7,7 


12.9 


0.0 


53.3 


1 3 


3 


Oat-straw 






H.2 


4.1; 3.0 


4.7 


H.3 


2.8 


24 5 


4.4 


40.0 


2,1 


2.9 


Clover . . 






2SM 


2.5 i 6.3 


2,6 


24.6 


6 3 


2ri.6 


5 


5.3 


3 


0.0 , 


Peas . . . 






(l,,T 


4.7130.1 


1.1 


10.1 


11.9 


35.3 


2 5 


1 5 


traces 


2 3 


French beans 






:i.3 


1.3 26.8 


0.1 


ft.H 


11.5 


4.4.1 


0.(1 


1.0 


1 races 


1.1 


Horse beans . 






1.0 


1.6:31.2 

i 


0.7 


5.1 


8.6 


45.2 


0.0 


0.5 


traces 


3.1 1 

1 



If these analytical results be now applied to the produce of an 
acre of ground, we should have the precise quantities of minera. 
substances abstracted from the soil by each of the several crops that 
enter into the rotation. Here they are in a table : 

MINERAL SUBSTANCES TAKEN UP FROM THE SOIL BY THE VARIOUS 
CROPS GROWN AT BECHELBRON.V UPON ONE ACRE. 







c 




Acids. 








d 




= 


Crop. 


d 

o 

a 


a 
1 
< 




. 


1 


5 


d 
1 


■a 

1 


d 


o 


Phos. 
phurie. 

Sul. 
phurie. J 




llw. !ll,s. 


lbs. 


lbs; 


lbs 


lbs 


lbs. 


lbs. 


Ihs 


lbs. 


lbs. 


Potatoes 


2KW 


4 


113 


13 


8 


3 


2 


6 


58 


« 


"a 


Beet-roots .... 


2908 


6.3 


183 


U 


3 


9 


13 


8 


H2 


Id 


4* 


Hall crop o( turni 


heS 


fM 


7.6 


50 


3 


5 


li 


5 


2 


19 


3 


0.7 


consumed off 1 


Kround, ) 
























Potato tops .... 


5042 


6.0 


303 


;« 


7 


4 


7 


5 


llii 


.49 


16 


Wheat . . 






10.-)2 2.4 


25 


12 


3 




0,8 


4 


7 


0.4 




Wheat-straw 






2.5.-* 1 7.0 


179 


5 


1.5 


1 


15 


9 


17 


121 


is 


Outs . . - 






975 4.0 


39 


6 


0,4 


0.2 


12 


3 


5 


21 


0.6 


Oat-straw . 






1176 j 5.1 


60 


1A 


2,5 


3 


5 


15 


17 


24 


1 


Clover . . 






3im 1.1 


2ftl 


18 


7 


7 


70 


18 


77 


15 


0.9 


Manured peas 






915. 


3.1 


28 


8 


1.2 


0.3 


3 


3 


10 


0.5 


traces. 


French beans 






144H 


3.5 


51 


13 


7 


0,1 


3 


6 


2,5 


0.6 


traces. 


Uurse beuas 






1944 


3.0 


68 


20 


0.75 


U.5 


3 


5 


26 


0.3 


traces. 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 367 

On looking at this table we perceive that a medium crop of wheat 
takes from one acre of ground about 12 lbs., and a crop of beans 
about 20 lbs. of phosphoric acid ; a crop of beet lakes 11 lbs. of the 
same acid, and further, a very large quantity of potash and soda. It 
is obvious that such a process tends continually to exhaust arable 
land of the mineral substances useful to vegetation which it con- 
tains ; and that a term must come when, without supplies of such 
mineral matters, the land would become unproductive from their ab 
straction. In bottoms of great fertility, such as those that are brought 
under tillage amidst the virgin forests of the New World at the pres- 
ent day, it may be imagined that any exhaustion of saline matters 
will remain unperceived for a long succession of years ; for a suc- 
cession of ages almost. And in South America, where the usual 
preliminary to cultivation is to burn the forest that stands on the 
ground, by which the saline and earthy constituents of millions of 
cubic feet of timber are added to the quantities that were already 
contained in the soil, I have already had occasion to speak of the 
ample returns which the husbandman receives for very small pains.* 
Under circumstances, in the neighborhood of large and populous 
towns, for instance, where the interest of the farmer and market- 
gardener is to send the largest possible quantity of produce to mar- 
ket, consuming the least possible quantity on the spot, the want of 
saline principles in the soil would very soon be felt, were it not that 
for every wagon-load of greens and carrots, fruit and potatoes, corn 
and straw, that finds its way into the city, a wagon-load of dung, 
containing each and every one of the principles locked up in the 
several crops, is returned to the land, and proves enough, and often 
more than enough, to replace all that has been carried away from it. 
The same principle holds good in regard to inorganic matters, which 
we have already established with reference to organic substances. 

The most interesting case for consideration is that of an isolated 
farming establishment — a rural domain, so situated that it can obtain 
nothing from without, but exporting a certain proportion of its pro- 
duce every year, has still to depend on itself for all it requires in the 
shape of manure. I have already shown, with sufficient clearness, 
I apprehend, how it is that lands in cultivation derive from the at- 
mosphere the azotized principles necessary to replace the azotized 
products of the farm, which are continually carried away in the 
shape of grain, cattle, &c. I have now to show how the various 
saline substances, the alkalies, the phosphates, &c., which are also 
exported incessantly, are replaced. I believe that I shall be able, 
with the assistance of chemical analysis, to throw light on one of 
the most interesting points in the nature and history of cropping, and 
succeed in practically illustrating the theory of rotations. In what 
is to follow immediately, I shall always reason on the practical data 
collected at Bechelbronn, and which have already served for the 

* The first breaks of the early English settlers in North America are now either very 
indifferent soils, or they have only been restored to some portion of their original fer- 
tility by manuring ; so that the supply of fertilizing elements is not inexhaustible.— 
Eno. Ed 



368 INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 

illustration of other particulars. My farm, I may say, by way of 
preliminary, is an ordinary establishment ; the lands which have 
been brought by a system of rational treatment to a very satisfactory 
state of fertility, are not rich at bottom and originally, and they fail 
off rapidly if they have not the dose of manure at regular intervals, 
which is requisite to maintain them in their state of productiveness. 
My first business was to determine the nature and the quantity of 
the mineral substances contained in my manure ; and with a view to 
arrive at this information, I burned considerable quantities of dung 
at different periods of the year, mixed the ashes of the several in- 
cinerations, and from the mixture took a sample for ultimate analysis. 
The mean results are represented by : 

(Carbonic 2.0 

Acids < Phosphoric 3.0 

( Sulphuric 1.9 

Chlorine 0.6 

Silica, sand 66.4 

Lime 8.6 

Magnesia 3.6 

Oxide of iron, alumina 6.1 

Potash and soda 7.8 

100.0 

But our farm-yard dung is not the only article we are in the habit 
of giving to our land ; it further receives a good dose of peat-ashes 
and gypsum. I here recall to the reader's mind that the mean com- 
position of peat-ashes is this : 

Silica 65.5 

Alumina 16.3 

Lime 6.0 

Magnesia 0.6 

Oxide of iron 3.7 

Potash and soda 2.3 

Sulphiuic acid. 5.4 

Chlorine 0.3 

100.0 

In the system followed at Bcchelbronn, the farm-yard dung laid 
upon an acre contains 26 cwts. 3 qrs. of ashes. On our clover leas 
we spread the first year 7 cubic feet of turf-ashes ; and in the begin- 
ning of spring of the second year, we lay on as much more, say 14 
cubic feet, in all weighing about 2 tons. I do not take the 8 cwts. 
of gypsum which, in conformity with usage, the second year's clover 
generally receives, because I believe this addition to be perfectly 
useless after the very sufficient dose of peat-ash which we employ. 

The whole of the mineral substances given to the land in the 
course of five years per acre is as follows, viz. : Ashes contained in 
the manure and in the peat-ashes, 7624 lbs. ; consisting of phos- 
phoric acid 90 lbs., sulphuric acid 304 lbs., chlorine 4.5 lbs., lime 
532.5 lbs., magnesia 135.6 lbs., potash and soda 339 lbs., silica and 
sand 4630 lbs., oxide of iron, &c., 353 lbs. 

It is therefore easy to perceive, from the preceding data, that 
what with the manure and the ashes it receives, the land is more 
than supplied with all the mineral substances required by the sev- 
eral crops it produces in the course of the rotation. Let us cast a 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 



369 



glance over these with reference to their mineral or inorganic con- 
stituents, as we liave already done in so tar as the organic matters 
are concerned ; let us compare, in a word, the quantity and the na- 
ture of the mineral substances removed m the course of five succes- 
sive years, in contrast with the quantity and the nature of the same 
substances supplied at the commencement of the series, and we shall 
find that the sums of the phosphoric acid, sulphuric acid, and chlo- 
rine, and of the alkaline and earthy bases of the crops, are always 
smaller than the quantities of the same substances which exist in 
and are supplied to the arable soil. 

I shall institute the comparison with the rotation No. 1, which 
begins with potatoes ; and further, with a continuous crop which, 
as the one that is most common and convenient, shall be Jerusalem 
artichokes. I have not thought it advisable to discuss the rotation 
No. 2, in which beet replaces the potato, because the ashes of these 
two crops are so much alike, that it may be assumed to be matter 
of mdifference which of the two enters as the drill-crop element into 
the series. With reference to the Jerusalem artichoke, I shall only 
remind the reader that the piece of land where it grows receives a 
dose of manure every two years, in the proportion of 41245 lbs. per 
acre, which manure contains 277G lbs. of mineral constituent. Fur- 
ther, in the course of each winter peat-ashes, in the ratio of 2700 lbs. 
per acre, are laid on the land ; and that the stems are generally in- 
cinerated on the spot, and the ashes they contain returned directly 
to the soil. 

TABLE OF THE MINERAL MATTERS OF THE CROPS AND MANURES IN 
THE COURSE OF A ROTATION. 



Average crop per acre. 



Phos- I Sul- 
phoric Phuric 



ROTATION NO. I. 

Potatoes 

2il and 4th years : wheat 

Ditto; wheat-straw 

3d year : clover 

5th year : oats 

Ditto : oat-straw 

2d crop turnips; half crop 

Sum of mineral substances 

Mineral substances of the manure 

Excess over the mineral matters of 
the crops 

INCESSANT PRODUCTION OF THE JE 
RUSALEM POTATO. 

1st and 2d years : mineral matters 
of the tubers 

Mineral matters of dung 

Ditto of turf ashes 

Whole mineral matters of manures 

Difference in favor of the manures 



lbs. 

113 
.50 

358 

284 
39 
60 
50 



lbs. 
13 
24 
11 
18 

6 

1§ 

3 



927 
7582 



76§ 
90 



2777 
4583 



lbs. 
8 



27 
304 



■225 310 
339 5049 



53 

248 



301 



287 120.51500 



1843 
3002 



370 INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 

It was at one time asserted, that in order to ensure to a crop of 
wheat the necessary quantity of piiosphates, its cultivation was pre- 
ceded by one of roots or tubers, or leguminous plants, which were 
supposed to contain a much less proportion of these salts. By ref- 
erence, however, to the table of mineral substances, removed from 
the soil by different crops, the absurdity of such reasoning becomes 
evident. For example, beans and haricots take 20 and 13.7 lbs. of 
phosphoric acid from every acre of land ; potatoes and beet-root 
fi"om tbe same surface take but 11 and 12.8 lbs. of that acid, exactly 
what is found in a crop of wheat. Trefoil is equally rich in phos- 
phates with the sheaves of corn which have gone before it, and this 
large dose of phosphoric acid withdrawn from the soil, will nowise 
dhninish the amount which will enter into the wheat that will by 
and by succeed the artificial meadow. It may be readily under- 
stood, that if the ground contains more than the quantity of mineral 
substances necessary for the total series of crops in a rotation, it is 
a matter of indiiference whether the crops draw upon the soil in 
any particular order, and these succeed according to rules generally 
adopted for quite different reasons. It suits well, for instance, to 
begin a rotation with a drill crop sown in spring, and which, conse- 
quently, follows in our system the oats which closed the preceding' 
rotation ; it is a great advantage to be able to collect and cart out 
the manure during winter. Besides, the order is quite at the farm- 
er's discretion, and there are places where, from particular reasons, 
quite another course is pursued. One i)art of the produce returns, 
as has been shown, to manure, after having served as fodder for the 
animals belonging to the farm. The inorganic matters are restored 
to the earth from whicli they came, deducting the fraction assimi- 
lated in the bodies of the cattle. Lastly, the whole of the wheat, 
and a certain amount of flesh will be exported, and with these a no- 
table quantity of inorganic matter. Thus, in the above described 
rotation of five years, the minimum exportation of saline substances 
which must be removed from every acre of land, may be represent- 
ed by 27 }j lbs. of phosphoric acid, and from 36 to 45 lbs. of alkali ; 
this is just so much lost for the manure, and as there is definitively 
found at the end of the rotation a quantity of manure equals and 
nearly similar to tiiat disposed of at the connnencement, it is essen- 
tial tliat the loss of mineral substance be made up from without, 
unless it be naturally contained in the soil. 

In my first researches on the rotation of crops,* I stated that 
wherever there are exportable products, it becomes indispensable to 
keep a large proportion of meadow land, quoting, as an extreme 
case, tlie triennial rotation with manured sunnncr-fallow. It is, in 
fact, the meadow which restores to the arable land the principles 
which have been carried oft". This point, advanced upon analogy, 
is amply confirmed by the results of analysis. 

I have examined, in reference to this question, the ashes of the 
hay of our meadows of Durrenbach, irrigated by the Sauer. TJie 

* Memoir communicated to the Academic des Sciences, in 1838 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 371 

analyses were made with ashes furnished by the crops of 1841 and 
1842. 

I. II. III. Average 

(Carbonic 9.0 5.5 " 7.3 

Acids < Phosphoric .... 5.3 5.3 5.5 5.4 

(Sulphuric 2.4 2.9 " 2.7 

Chlorine 2.3 2.8 " 2.6 

Lime 20.4 15.4 " 17.9 

Magnesia 6.0 8.3 " 7.2 

Potash 16.1 27.3 " 21.7 

Soda 1.2 2.3 " 1.8 

Silica 33.7 29.2 " 31.5 

Oxide of iron, &c 1.5 0.6 0.5 0.9 

Loss 2.1 0.4 " 1.0 

100.0 100.0 100.0 

No. 1 yielded 6.0 per cent, of ash. 

No. 2 " 6.2 idem. 

In admitting as the average yearly return of our irrigated mead- 
ows, 3666 lbs. of hay and after-grass for the acre, it appears that 
we obtain, from a corresponding surface of land, 223.6 lbs. of ash, 
containing : 

(Carbonic 16.3 

.\cids < Phosphoric 12.1 

(Sulphuric 6.0 

Chlorine 5.7 

Lime 39.1 

Magnesia 16.1 

Potash and soda .52.0 

Silica 70.4 

Oxide of iron, and loss 4.2 

221.9* 

In reckoning, as I have done, *the lowest annual exportation of 
mineral substance from one acre of arable land at 5.5 lbs. of phos- 
phoric acid and 8.2 lbs. of alkali, (potash and soda,) there must, in 
order to make up for loss, arrive each year at the farm a quantity 
of hay corresponding to about 1800 lbs. for every acre of ploughed 
land, which would establish between the arable and meadow land, a 
relation somewhat less than 1 to ^. 

In practice, the relation in question is sensibly less than that de- 
duced from analysis ; in some farms the meadow-land only occupies 
a fourth or fifth of the whole surface. When rye replaces wheat, 
the extent in meadow-land may be still more limited. It deserves 
notice, that I have supposed the arable land as destitute of proper 
inorganic matter, and that all came from the manure ashes and lime 
laid on, which is not rigorously true. There are soils containing 
traces of phosphates, and it is difficult to find clay or marl exempt 
from potash. Nevertheless, many clear-headed practical men begin 
to suspect that meadow has been too much sacrificed to arable land. 
In localities placed in simibr conditions to those in which we are, 
removed from every source of organic manures, which, as I have 
shown in concert with M. Payen, are always furnished with saline 

* The sum is only too small here from the number of places of decimals not having 
been carried out far enough. — Eno. Ed. 



372 INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 

principles, an attempt has been made to imitate what is done in more 
favored districts, where it is possible, for example, to add animal 
remains to the manure. The corn crops felt this new procedure ; 
nor could it be otherwise. But now there is a reaction in the op- 
posite sense, and I could name most thriving establishments, where 
one-half of the farm is in meadow. The ever-increasing demand 
for butcher-meat will further this movement to the great advantage 
of the soil. In consequence of our peculiar position at Bechelbronn, 
nearly half our land is meadow, which allows of a large exportation 
of the produce of the arable land. In applying the results of the 
preceding analyses, I find that each year, provided there is no loss, 
the hay ought to bring at least : 

1254 lbs. of pho.sphoric acid, 



627 ' 
602 ' 


' sulphuric acid, 
' chlorine, 


4155 ' 


' lime, 


1672 ' 
5456 ' 
7312 ' 


' magnesia, 

' potash and soda, 

' silica. 



This large amount of mineral substances is supplied by the mead- 
ows, which have no other manure than the water and mud thereby 
deposited, after flowing over the Yosges' freestone ; they receive 
no manure from the farm, but are merely earthed with the sludge 
and mire borne down by the stream ; these are real sources of saline 
impregnation. Meadows without running water ought not to be 
ranged in the same category, they only give the principles naturally 
contained in them ; hence, they ^nust be always manured every 
three or four years, and indeed, if not situate upon a naturally rich 
soil, are, according to my experience., very far from profitable. 

The excess of mineral matters introduced into the ground over 
those that issue with the crops, an excess that ought always to be 
secured by judicious management, enriches the soil in saline and 
alkaline principles, which accumulate in the lapse of years, just as 
vegetable remains and azotized organic principles accumulate un- 
der a good system of rotation. By this, even in localities the most 
disadvantageously situate for the purchase of manure, temporary 
recurrence may be had to the introduction of such crops as flax, 
rape, &c., which being almost wholly exported, leave little organic 
residuum in the earth, and at the same time carry olT a considerable 
quantity of mineral substance ; circumstances which determine, as 
may be eiisily conceived, the maximum of exhaustion, and for that 
reason tend to reduce a soil becoming over-rich to what may be 
called tlie standard fertility. 

In reviewing the chief points examined it will be seen, that as far 
as regards organic matter, the systeins^^f culture which in borrow- 
ing most from the atmosphere, leave the most abundant residues in 
tlie land, are those tiiat constitute the most productive rotations. In 
respect to inorganic matter, the rotation, tube advantageous, to have 
an enduring success, ought to be so managed that the crops ex- 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 373 

ported should not leave the dung-hill with less than that constant 
quantity of mineral substance which it ought to contain. A crop 
which abstracts from the ground a notable proportion of one of its 
mineral elements, should not be repeatedly introduced in the course 
of a rotation, which depends on a given dose of manure, unless by 
the effect of time mineral element has been accumulated in the land. 
A clover crop takes up, for example, 77 lbs. of alkali per acre. If 
the fodder is consumed on the spot, the greater portion of the potash 
and soda will return to the manure after passing through the cattle, 
and the land eventually recover nearly the whole of the alkali. It 
will be quite otherwise if the fodder is taken to market ; and it is to 
these repeated exportations of the produce of artificial meadows 
that the failure of trefoil, now observed in soils which have long 
yielded abundantly, is undoubtedly due. Accordingly, a means has 
been proposed of restoring to these lands their reproductive power, 
by applying alkaline manure.* If under such circumstances carbo- 
nate of soda would act as favorably as carbonate of potash or wood- 
ashes, the soda salt, in spite of its commercial value, might prove 
serviceable, and deserves a trial. 

The lime manures naturally promote the growth of plants of 
which calcareous salts form a constituent ; but here a capital distinc- 
tion must be made. A soil may contain from 15 to 20 in the 100 of 
lime, and still be unable to dispense with calcareous manure ; be- 
cause the lime is in some other state than as it exists in chalk, as 
in the rubbish of pyroxene, mica, serpentine, and the like. A soil 
of this kind, although replete with lime, might still require gypsum 
for artificial meadow, and chalk for wheat and oats. It is from the 
carbonate that plants of rapid growth derive the lime essential to 
them, as was established by the researches of Rigaud de Lille, re- 
searches which have been censured by agricultural writers to whom 
they were unintelligible. I advocate the opinion of Rigaud, be- 
cause in the Andes of Riobamba I have seen lucern growing in au- 
gitic rubbish, very rich in calcareous matter, and yet greatly bene- 
fited by liming. 

The operation of gypsum is to introduce calcareous matter into 
plants. This I have endeavored to demonstrate from the analysis 
of the ash on the one hand, and on the other, from the consideration 
that finely divided carbonate of lime, as it exists in wood-ashes, acts 
with equal efficacy upon artificial meadows. By what means gyp- 
sum, if it does not enter the vegetable as a sulphate, parts with its 
sulphuric acid, is at present conjectural. It appears highly proba- 
ble that calcareous matter is chiefly beneficial from the particular 
action it exercises on the fixed ammoniacal salts of the manure, 
transforming these successively, slowly, and as they may be wanted, 
into carbonate of ammonia. In the most favorable condition, the 
earth is only moist, not soaked with water, but permeable to the air. 
New researches will perhaps illustrate the utility of ammoniacal va- 
pors thus developed in a confined atmosphere, where the roots are 

* Information communicated by M. Schattenmann. 
32 



374 INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF MANURES AND CROPS. 

in operation. At least, it would be difficult to assign any other office 
to chalk in the marling or liming of land intended for corn, when 
we know how little lime corn absorbs. If, indeed, gypsum promotes 
the vegetation of trefoil, lucerne, sainfoin, &c., by furnishing the 
needful calcareous element, it could not fail to exercise an equally 
favorable agency upon wheat and oats, did they require it. The ex- 
periments adduced prove it not to be so, and their results are in 
some measure corroborated by analysis. Thus, if we compare the 
different quantities of lime withdrawn from the soil by trefoil and 
corn, we find them as follows : 

The clover crop takes from 1 acre of ground nearly 70 lbs. of lime. 
Wheat " " " 16 

Oat " " " 6.4 

With this comparison before us, it seems evident that if the marl- 
ing and liming of corn lands had no other object than the introduc- 
tion of the minute portion of lime which is encountered in the crops, 
it would be difficult to justify the enormous expenditure of calcare- 
ous carbonate which is proved by daily experience to be advan- 
tageous. 

It may be inferred from the foregoing, that in the most frequent 
case, namely, that of arable lands not sufficiently rich to do without 
manure, there can be no continuous cultivation without annexation 
of meadow ; in a word, one part of the farm must yield crops with- 
out consuming manure, so as to replace the alkaline and earthy salts 
that are constantly withdrawn by successive harvests from another 
part. Lands enriched by rivers alone permit of a total and contin- 
ued export of their produce without exhaustion. iSuch are the fields 
fertilized by the inundations of the Nile ; and it is difficult to form 
an idea of the prodigious quantities of phosphoric acid, magnesia, 
and potash, which in a succession of ages have passed out of Egypt 
with her incessant exports of corn. 

Irrigation is, without doubt, the most economical and efficient 
means of increasing the fertility of the soil, out of the abundant for- 
age which it produces, and the resulting manure. Plants take up 
and concentrate in their organs the mineral and organic elements 
contained in the water, sometimes in proportions so minute as to es- 
cape analysis ; just as they absorb and condense, in modified forms, 
the aeriform principles which constitute but some 10,000th parts in 
the composition of the atmosphere. It is thus that vegetables col- 
lect and organize the elements which are dissolved in water, and 
disseminated through the earth and the air, as a preparative to their 
being assimilated by animals. 



ORIGIN OF ANIMAL PRINCIPLES. 375 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF THE FEEDING OF THE ANLMALS BELONGING TO A FARM j 
AND OF THE IMMEDIATE PRINCIPLES OF ANIMAL ORIGIN. 

^ 1. ORIGIN OF ANIMAL PRINCIPLES. 

It is now generally admitted that the food of animals must ne- 
cessarily contain azote ; and this circumstance has led to the infer- 
ence, that the herbivorous tribes obtain from their food the azote 
which enters into the constitution of their bodies. 

In a general way, the individual consuming a certain portion of 
food every day, nevertheless does not increase in his average 
weight. This is what occurs with animals upon the quantity of 
food wliich is known to be sufficient for their keep ; and it has been 
found that the human sul)ject, living very regularly, returns at a cer- 
tain hour, or at certain hours of tlie day, to a certain mean weight. 
Grooms, farm servants, &c., are perfectly well aware of the fact, 
that with a certain allowance of hay and corn, a horse will be kept 
in the condition necessary to do the work required of him without 
either gaining or losing in flesh. 

Under such circumstances, the whole of the elementary matter 
contained in the food consumed, ought to be found in the dejections, 
the excretions, and the products of the act of respiration. And as- 
suming tiiat this is so, it might then be maintained that none of the 
elements is assimilated, assimilation being taken in the sense of an 
addition of principles introduced with the food to the principles al- 
ready present in the body. Yet is there unquestionably assimila- 
tion, in the sense that the alimentary matters of the food become 
fixed in the system, having there undergone modification or change ; 
and that they replace, or come instead of other elements of the 
same liind, which are daily thrown off by the vital acts of the 
economy. 

During the nutrition of a young animal, and also in the process 
of fattening an adult, things goon differently ; here there is unques- 
tionably definitive fixation of a portion of the matter contained in the 
food : there is no longer balance between the waste and the supply ; 
an animal then increases in weight notably and rapidly. 

Looking at the question of feeding in the most general way, then, 
I admit that an adult animal, upon the daily allowance, voids a 
quantity of matter in its various excretions precisely equal to the 
quantity which it receives in its food :* all the elements, the same 
in nature and in quantity, which are contained in the food, are also 
contained in the excrements, vapors, and gases, which pass off from 
the living body ; carbon and azote, hydrogen and oxygen, phospho- 

* BoussingauU, Annates dc Chiniie, 2e aide, t. \xxxi, p. 1 13. 



376 ORIGIN OF ANIMAL PRINCIPLES. 

rus, sulphur, and chlorine, calcium, magnesiunn, sodium, potassium 
and iron, as they are all encountered in the food, so are they all en- 
countered in the body, and also in the excretions of an animal ; and 
it seems certain, that no one of these primary or simple substances 
can be wanting in the nutriment without the body very speedily 
feeling the ill effects of its absence. Iron, for example, is a con- 
stant principle in the coloring matter of the blood ; it also exists in 
large quantity in the hair ; and he who should live on food that con- 
tained no trace of it would certainly, and before long, become disor- 
dered in his health. 

In what has just been said, I take it for granted that animals do 
not absorb or assimilate any of the azote which forms so large a 
constituent in the air they breathe ; and I am warranted in this by 
the researches of every physiologist of any name or distinction. Not 
only do animals obtain no azote from the atmosphere, but they actu- 
ally exhale it incessantly, as was proved by M. Despretz in the 
course of his numerous experiments, and as I myself also demon- 
strated in the inquiries I undertook to ascertain whether herbivorous 
animals obtained azote from the air or not. The azote exhaled, it 
was discovered, proceeded entirely from the food consumed by the 
animal ; a fact which, already of great importance in a physiologi- 
cal point of view and in reference to general physics, bears at the 
same time so immediately upon one of the most important questions 
of agriculture, that I think it well to give the particulars of one of 
the procedures by which it has been established. 

The experiments in this case were performed on a milch-cow 
and a full-grown horse, which were placed in stalls so contrived 
that the droppings and the urine could be collected without less. 
Before being made the subjects of experiment, tiie animals were bal- 
lasted or fed for a month with the same ration that was furnished to 
them during the three days and three nights which they passed in 
the experimental stalls. During the month, the weight of the ani- 
mals did not vary sensibly, a circumstance which happily .enables us 
to assume that neither did the weight vary during the seventy-two 
hours when they were under especial observation. , 

The cow was foddered with after-math hay and potatoes ; the 
horse with the same hay and oats. The quantities of forage were 
accurately weighed, and their precise degree of raoistness and their 
composition were determined from average samples. The water 
drunk was measured, its saline and earthy constituents having been 
previously ascertained. The excrementitious matters passed were 
of course collected with the greatest care ; the excrements, the 
urine, and the milk were weighed, and the constitution of the whole 
estimated from elementary analyses of average specimens of each. 
The results of the two experiments are given in this table : 



ELEMENTS OF FOOD AND OF EXCRETIONS. 



377 



FOOD CONSUMED BY THK HORSE IN 24 HOURS. 



Forag^e. 



We.-ht 



Weight ii 
tlie dry 
state. 



Carbon. Hydri 



earths 



H..y, . 

Oats, 

W'uter, 

Total. 



lbs. oz. 
7 U 
2 7 



10 7 
3 18 



b. oz. dwt. lb. oz. dwt. 
6 8 8 10 3 2 
1 10 14 I 1 7 



l>. oz. dwt. 
1 6 14 
2 10 
8 



69 



23 6 I 10 6 ! 1 



7 2 I 4 9 



1 9 12 



PRODUCTS VOIDED BY THE HORSE IN 24 HOURS. 



Urine, 
Excrements, - 

Total, 

Total matter of i 
the food, - ! 

Difference, 



Weight 



lb. oz. dwt. 
3 6 15 
38 2 2 



41 8 17 
69 



Weight ill 
the dry 

state. 



ntary matter in the products. 



Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxy, 



[b. oz. dwt. lb oz. dwt 
9 14 3 10 
9 5 6 3 7 17 



10 3 3 11 7 
22 6 10 6 



273 3ll2 3 0166 13 



7 
5 15 



6 2 
12 5 



lb. oz. dwt, 

1 2 
3 6 14 



3 7 16 

8 7 2 



1 
2 



3 14 
4 9 



b. oz. dwt. 

3 10 

1 6 10 



1 10 
1 9 12 



WATER CONSUMED BY THE 
HORSE IN 24 HOURS. 



WATER VOIDED BY THE 
IN 24 HOURS. 



With the hay, 
With the outs, - 
Taken as drink. 

Total coiuumed. 



2 3 
14 
35 3 



With the nrine, 
Witli the e.xcrements. 



4 Total voided, - 
Water consumed, 



Water exhaled by pulmonary and cutaneous transpiration. 



2 6 
23 8 



25 14 
38 4 



FOOD CONSUMED BY THE COW IN 24 HOURS. 



Weight ii 
the dry 
state. 



Elementary matter ol' the lood. 



Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Azote, 



Potatoes, - 
Atler-math hay. 
Water. 

Total. ■ 



40 2 5 

20 1 2 
160 



Ih.oz. dwt. 
11 2 1 
16 11 



,b. oz. dwt, 
4 U 2 
7 U 11 



7 
11 



b. oz.dwi. lb. oz. dwt. 

4 10 17 1 12 

5 10 17 I 4 17 



6 13 
8 6 
1 12 



220 3 7 



1 1 



12 10 13 



1 7 2 



10 9 14 1 6 9 



PRODUCTS VOIDED BY THE COW IN 24 HOURS. 



Weight 



Weight ii 
the dry 
state. 



Elementary matter in the products. 



Carbo 



Hydrogen. Oxygen. 



Azote. 



Excrements, . 

Urine. 

Milk, . . 

Total, 
" matter of food. 

Difference, 



lb. oz. dwt 
76 1 9 

21 11 12 

22 10 10 



lb. oz. dwt. 
10 8 12 

2 6 17 

3 1 



b- oz. dwt. 
4 7 

8 7 

1 8 3 



b. oz. dwt, 
6 13 
16 
3 3 



lb. oz. dwt. 
4 9 
8 3 
10 6 



Ib.oz. dwt. 
2 19 
1 3 
1 9 



lb. oz. dwt. 

13 8 
1 6 
1 16 



120 11 11 
220 3 7 



16 4 

28 1 



6 11 10 
12 10 13 



10 12 

1 7 2 



5 6 18 
10 9 14 



5 11 
6 9 



5 10 
4 11 



99 3 16 U 8 12 5 11 3 



5 2 16 18 



WATER CONSUMED BY THE COW 
IN 24 HOURS. 



WATER VOIDED BY THE COW IN 
24 HOURS. 



With the potatoes. 
With the hay, - 
Taken as drink. 



lbs. oz. 

23 12 

2 9 

132 



With the potatoes. 
With the urine, . 
With the milk. 



158 



Total consumed. 

Water passed off by pulmonary and cutaneous transpiration 



6 Total voided. 
Water consume'' 



lbs. oz. 
53 10 

15 14 

16 3 



85 11 

158 5 



37"5 C0M2'JSTION OF CARBON. 

From these sums it appears that the azote of the excrements is 
Jess by from 339.6 to 455.0 grains than tliat of the forage consumed. 
It appears also that the whole quantity of elementary matter con- 
tained in the excrements is less than that which had been taken as 
food ; the diflerence is of course due to the quantities which were 
lost by respiration and the cutaneous exhalation. 

The oxygen and hydrogen that are not accounted for in the sum 
of the products have not disappeared in the precise proportions re- 
quisite to form water ; the excess of hydrogen amounts to as many 
as from 13 to 15 dwts. It is probable that this hydrogen of the 
food became changed into water by combining during respiration 
with the oxygen of the air. 

The loss of carbon, which is very considerable, seeing that in the 
two experiments it amounts to nearly 1-2^ lbs., must have gone to 
form the carbonic acid, which is known to be so large and import- 
ant a constituent in the expired air, and which is also exhaled from 
the general surAice of the body. Neglecting the latter, it appears 
that each of the animals produced in the course of twenty-four 
hour."^ upwards of 13 cubic feet of carbonic acid gas, the thermome- 
ter supposed at 32" F., the barometer at 30 inches.* 

During respiration, then, or as a consequence of respiration, the 
carbon and hydrogen of the food have disappeared and given rise, 
by the concurrence of the oxygen of the air, to carbonic acid and 
water, precisely as if they had been burned. And an animal may, 
in fact, be regarded as an apparatus or system, in which a slow com- 
bustion is incessantly going on ; there is perpetual disengagement 
of carbonic acid gas and of the vapor of water, just as there is from 
a stove in which any organic substance, wood, for example, is burn- 
ing. In either case there is evolution of heat ; all animals have a 
temperature above that of the medium which surrounds them, and 
the excess of the elevation is in some sort relative to the activity of 
the respiratory process, or, in other words, to the intensity of the 
combustion. 

Under the influence of the oxygen that is taken into the body, the 
soluble principles of the blood pass through a series of modifications, 
the last of which is carbonic acid, which is exhaled and dissipated 
in the air ; and it is in this way that a portion of the carbon of the 
food is returned to the atmosphere, after having accomplished the 
important function of supplying the animal with the heat that is ne- 
cessary to its existence. Far from deriving any thing from the air, 
consequently, animals, on the contrary, are continually pouring car- 
bon into it. The food is, therefore, the only source whence animals 
derive the matter that enters into their constitution ; and, as the 
primary food of animals is obtained from vegetables, herbivorous 
creatures must necessartly find in the plants they consume all the 

* The large quantity of carbonic acid shows the necessity for large and well-venti- 
lated stables and cow-houses. A cow, i* appears, will vitiate 06 cubic feet of air in 
a day. It will b^ observed in the table tliat the saline and earthy matters of the 
ejecta exceed those of the ingesta in both instjinres. This is from error in observa- 
tion, and is owing to the difficulty of determining e.\attly the quantities of these sub- 
stances. 'I'he error is less in the case of the horse than in that of the cow. 



IDENTITY OF ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE PRINCIPLES. 



379 



elements they assimilate. It might be expected from this, that the 
material constitution of animals should approach, and sometimes even 
be identical with that of vegetables ; and it is found, in fact, that a 
considerable number of ternary or quarternary organic compounds, 
of either kingdom, present the greatest analogy to one another ; their 
identity, in some cases, is even complete. Some fatty substances 
of animal origin do not difi'er in any way from vegetable fats ; the 
margaric acid which is obtained from hog's lard has the precise 
characters of the margaric acid which is furnished by olive oil, and 
the same identity is preserved through the entire series of quarter- 
nary azotized principles, as a glance at the following table, which 
contains the results of the analyses performed by Messrs Dumas 
and Cahours, will show. 





FIBRXNE. 


ALBUMEN. 


CASEINE. 


Animal. 


Vegetable. 


Animal. 


Vegetable. 


Animal 


Vegetable. 




52.8 

7.0 

23.7 

16.5 


53.2 

7.0 

23.4 

10.4 


53.5 

7.1 
23.0 

15.8 


53.7 

7.1 
23.5 
15.7 


53.5 

7.0 

23.7 

15.8 


53.5 

7.1 

23.4 

16.0 


Hydrogen 






100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 



These principles, to which must be added gelatine, the fats and 
several earthy and alkaline salts, constitute the frame-work of the 
animal tissues, or the fluids which penetrate them ; it is therefore 
necessary for us to examine each of them shortly. 

Gelatine is met with in almost all the solid parts, in the bones, 
tendons, cartilages, skin, cellular tissue, muscular flesh — all contain 
it. It is readily soluble in boiling water ; cold water only takes up 
a small quantity of it. Two or three parts of gelatine dissolved in 
100 parts of hot water, suffice to turn the fluid into a tremulous jelly 
when it has become cold. Tannin, or infusion of gall-nuts, precipi- 
tates gelatine completely from its solution, the precipitate being very 
bulky and perfectly insoluble in water ; and it is this chemical com- 
bination or principle which lies at the bottom of the art of tanning. 

Gelatine is extensively used in the arts, under the familiar name 
of glue. Isinglass consists of gelatine nearly pure, and, according 
to Mulder, contains : 

Carbon. 50.8 

Hydrogen. 6.6 

Azote 18.3 

Oxygen 24.3 

100.0 

Fibrine occurs in a state of solution in the blood, and forms the 
principal ingredient in muscular flesh. It is readily obtained by 
whipping a quantity of blood just taken from the veins of a living 
animal ; the white stringy masses that adhere to the rod are fibrine, 
which, by gentle kneading under water, become colorless. Fibrine, 



380 ALBUMEN, CASEUM. 

when moist, is a higlily elastic and flexible substance ; dried, it loses 
about 30 per cent, of water, and becomes brittle, horny, semi-trans- 
parent. Thrown into water, it gradually imbibes all it had lost by 
drying, and regains its former properties. Burned and incinerated, 
fibrine leaves a quantity of ash, which consists, for the major part, 
of phosphate of lime, with which is mixed a small quantity of phos- 
phate of magnesia and of oxide of iron. 

Albumen exists in large quantity dissolved in the water or serum 
of the blood, and in the white of the egg; it is also found in almost 
all the animal fluids that are not excretions, or destined to be thrown 
oflf as useless to the system. Albumen, as familiarly known, has 
the remarkable property of coagulating or setting into a soft fluid, at 
a certain temperature — 158" F. 

Caseum, or caseine, is the distinguishing principle of milk. By 
combining with acids it forms an insoluble compound ; and it under- 
goes a remarkable coagulation, as all the world knows, in contact 
with a piece of the inner membrane of the stomach of a young ani- 
mal : from a fluid it sets into a soft solid, which by degrees separates 
into two portions — whey and curd. The curd, or caseum, always 
contains fat, and, when burned, leaves a considerable quantity of 
ash. 

Physiologists distinguish three principal tissues in the bodies of 
animals ; the muscular, the nervous, and the cellular. 

The jnusrular tissue consists of an assemblage of contractile fibres, 
here disseminated through the masses of organs, there collected into 
bundles and constituting the flesh. This is the instrument by which 
animals perform all their voluntary motions, and it is that also by 
which all the active but involuntary movements of the body are ex- 
cited. Muscular flesh is always a compound substance, however ; it 
consists of fibrine, the contractile or proper element, albumen, fat, 
gelatine, an odorous extractive matter, lactic acid, different salts and 
the coloring principle of the blood. 

Put into cold water, so long as the temperature is below from 130° 
to 140° F., little effect is produced beyond the solution of the soluble 
salts which it may contain, and of a portion of its extractive matter 
and albumen. At from 175" to 195", the albumen which had been 
dissolved, coagulates and rises to the top as scum, and the fat melts 
and floats on the surf\ice. The fibrinous element of the meat, how- 
ever, preserves its characters even after the action of boiling water 
continued for some time. 

Tlie nervous tissue constitutes the brain, spinal marrow, and 
nerves, distributed to all parts of the body. Brain in its composition 
contains a large quantity of water, — 80 percent. — certain fatty mat- 
ters, albumen, osmazoiie, phospiiorus in combination with fat, sul- 
phur, and phospliates of potash, lime, and magnesia. The composition 
of the brain of animals, the dog, the sheep, the ox, appears to be 
very analogous to that of the human subject. 

Cellular tissue is the general connecting medium throughout the 
animal body, and is not only met with, it may be said, everywhere, 
but forms a main element in many of the textures of the body, such 



BONES, BLOOD. 381 

as the serous and mucous membranes, the cartilages, the bones 
themselves, which are in fact only cellular tissue impregnated with 
calcareous salts. Tendons may be viewed as condensed ropes of 
cellular tissue ; by long boiling in water they melt entirely into gela- 
tine. 

Bones consist of cellular tissue, as stated, resolvable into gelatine, 
and of a large proportion of saline earthy matter, consisting princi- 
pally of phosphate of lime. The presence of this phosphate is not 
extraordinary, inasmuch as we have found that it forms an element 
in all the vegetables upon which animals are supported. By boiling 
bones even reduced to powder under the usual pressure of the atmo- 
sphere, but a small quantity of their gelatine is obtained ; but by put- 
ting them into a Papin's digester, and subjecting them to a consider- 
ably higher temperature than that of boiling water, we can dissolve 
the whole, or nearly the whole of the animal matter, and leave the 
earthy parts unchanged ; or by proceeding in another way, by soaking 
bones for a time in dilute muriatic acid, we can dissolve out the 
earthy matter, and leave the bone, having its original form indeed, 
but as an elastic, pliant gristle. 

The relations between the earthy and organic matter of bone, 
vary with the species, but especially with the age of the animal. In 
early life the cellular element predominates ; in adult age the salts 
predominate. We have three analyses of bone, which I shall here 
present : 

Man. Ox. Ox. 

Cartilage susceptible of change into gelatine 33.3 33.3 50.0 

Sub-phosphate of lime 53.0 57.4 37.0 

Carbonate of lime 11.8 3.9 10.0 

Phosphate of magnesia 1.2 2.0 1.2 

Soda, and a trace of common salt 1.2 3.4 " 

100.0 100.0 98.3 

Hair has a very complex composition, no fewer than nine different 
principles or substances having been detected in its constitution ; 
among the number, mucus, various oily matters, sulphur, and iron ; 
wool, fur, and horn, are all similar in their composition to hair. 

Blood, in all the higher animals, is a sluggish fluid, of a deep red 
color ; in many of the inferior tribes, however, such as insects, crus- 
taceans, and shell-fish, it is limpid, and generally colorless. Under 
the microscope, red blood is seen to consist of two distinct portions, 
a serum or whey, in which float a multitude of minute, solid, opaque 
corpuscles — the globules of the blood of physiologists, particles which 
have different characters in different classes of animals. 

Blood is a very heterogeneous compound. Left to itself, after 
being drawn from a vein, it sets or coagulates into a soft gelatinous 
solid, which by and by begins to separate into two portions, one 
watery, of a yellowish color, and opalescent, the water, whey, or 
serum ; another solid, of a deep red or reddish brown color, the clot 
or coagulum. The watery portion contains a large quantity of albu- 
men in solution. M. Lecanu, in his analysis of the blood, speaks of 
as many as twenty-five different substances as entering into its com- 
position : * • 



382 BLOOD, MILK. 



Water. 790.4 

Oxygen, azote, free carbonic acid 

Iron 

Hydrochlorates of soda, potash, ammonia 

Sulphates of potash and of goda 

Suhcarbonate of lime and magnesia 

Phosphates of soda, lime, and magnesia I .^ ^ 

Lactate of soda '^ "•" 

A soap, having soda and fixed fat acids for its elements 

An odorous, volatile salt, a fat acid 

A fatty substance, containing phosphorus 

Cholesterine 

gcroline 

Albumen dissolved in the water ' 67.8 

Globules and fibrine 130.8 



1000.0 



The blood globules consist principally of albumen combined with 
a little fibrine and red coloring matter. Any difference observed 
between one sample of blood and another, is connected especially, 
almost exclusively, with the relative proportions of the liquid part or 
serum, and the solid part or clot. The solids are in larger propor- 
tion in males than females, in grown-up persons than in aged indi- 
viduals and children, in subjects well and abundantly fed than in 
those indifferently supplied with food. No analysis that has yet 
been made has thrown any true light on the cause of the difference 
ofcolor perceived between arterial and venous blood ; nevertheless, 
it is positively known that it is by the concurrence of the oxygen of 
the atmosphere that the arterial blood in the living body acquires 
the characters which distinguish it, and that carbonic acid gas is 
evolved or thrown off in the course of the action that takes place. 

Ox blood, thoroughly dried, has been found to consist of: 

Carbon 52.0 

Hydrogen 7.2 

Azote 15.1 

Oxygen 21.3 

Ash 4.4 

100.0 

Milk. This well-known fluid may be said to combine in itself all 
the organic principles and mineral substances which enter into the 
constitution of organized beings. Caseum, identical with fibrine and 
albumen, fatty matters, sugar of milk, and different salts, among the 
number of which the phosphates stand distinguished. 

The caseum, the sugar, and a portion of the salts, are in solution ; 
the fatty matters are held in suspension in the milk in the form of 
globules. The following table will be found useful, as giving a com- 
prehensive survey of the composition of different kinds of milk. 



MILK. 



383 





3=" 




■^ ,A 




c . 










aj 






.-_^ 
























a gS 






fc^ 


S'3 






Milk. 


£-3 S 


s 


o s ^ 








Authors of the 






1 


s o 

02 ■" 


^ 




analyses 


Of the cow. . 


3.6 


4.0 


5.0 


87.4 


12.6 


Average of 12Le Bel andBous-| 














analyses at Be- 


singault. 














chelhronn. 




Of the cow. . 


3.8 


3.5 


6.1 


86.6 


13.4 


Average of 6 an- 
alyses in the en- 
virons of Paris. 


Quevenne. 


Of the cow. . 


4.5 


3.1 


5.4 


87.0 


13.0 


Idem. 


Henri and Chev- 
alier. 


Of the cow. . 


5.6 


3.6 


4.0 


86.8 


13.2 


Idem. 


Lecanu. 


Of the cow. . 


5.1 


3.0 


4.6 


87.3 


12.7 


An analysis, 
Giessen. 


Haidlen. 


Of the ass... 


1.7 


1.4 


6.4 


90.5 


9.5 


Average of 5 an- P61igot. 
alyses. 


Of woman... 


3.1 


3.4 


4.3 


89.2 


10.8 


Of good quality. Haidlen. 


Of woman.. • 


2.7 


1.3 


3.2 


92.8 


7.2 


Of middling qual- Haidlen. 
ity. 1 



Cow's milk always shows slight alkaline reaction ; its density is 
about 1.03. According to M. Haidlen, it contains no salt formed 
by an organic acid, no lactates, and the alkali is in combination with 
caseum, the solution of which it assists. It may contain about a 
half per cent, of ash, the several constituents of which appear to be 
very stable, though their proportions vary greatly. In 100 parts 
of milk, taken from two different cows, Haidlen found the following 
salts : 

Phosphate of lime 0.231 0.344 

Phosphate of magnesia 0.042 0.064 

Phosphate of iron 0.007 0.007 

Chloride of potassium 0.144 0.183 

Chloride of sodium 0.024 0.034 

Soda 0.042 0.045 

0.490 0.677 

As cow's milk is that which is by far the most directly interesting 
to agriculture, I shall enter somewhat particularly into its history ; 
having, however, already spoken of caseum, its distinguishing con- 
stituent, and albumen, I shall here confine myself to the subject of 
the sugar and the oil or butter. 

Sugar of milk is prepared for commercial purposes, in countries 
or districts where cheese-making is carried on to a great extent, 
and the quantity of whey at command is very large. In some Can- 
tons of Switzerland, sugar of milk is obtained by simply evaporating 
whey properly clarified, to the consistence of sirup, which deposites 
the sugar in the crystalline form as it cools. This first produce is 
brown, and contaminated with various impurities, from which it is 
freed by repeated solutions and crystallizations. It then becomes 
colorless, transparent, and nearly tasteless, feeling gritty between 
the teeth, and having only an obscure sweet taste. It requires from 
8 to 9 parts of cold water to dissolve it ; in hot water it is more 
soluble. According to Proust, it ron.sists of; 



384 MILK. 

Carbon 40.0 

Hydrogen fi.7 

Oxygen 53.3 

100.0 

Butter. To understand the preparation of butter thoroughly, it 
is absoUitcly necessary to know the physical constitution of the 
milk from which it is obtained. Now the microscope shows us that 
milk holds in suspension an infinity of globules of different dimen- 
sions, which, by reason of their less specific gravity, tend to rise to 
the surface of the liquid in which they float, where they collect, 
and by and by form a film or layer of a different character from the 
fluid beneath ; tiie superficial layer is the cream, and this removed, 
the subjacent liquid constitutes the skim-mtlk. This separation ap- 
pears to take place most completely in a cool temperature from 54° 
to 60" F. 

Allowed to stand for a time, which varies with the temperature, 
milk becomes sour, and by and by separates into three strata or 
parts : cream, whey, and curd, or coagulated caseum. By suffering 
the milk to become acid before removing the cream, it has been 
thought that a larger quantity of this, the most valuable constituent 
of the milk, was obtained ; and the fact is probably so ; but in dis- 
tricts where the subject of the dairy has been most carefully stud- 
ied, it has been found that it is better to cream before the appearance 
of any signs of acidity have appeared. When a knife can be push- 
ed through the cream, and withdrawn without any milk appearing, 
the cream ought to bo removed.* 

Butter is obtained from cream by churning, as all the world 
knows ; by the agitation, the fatty particles cohere and separate from 
the watery portion, at first in smaller and then in larger masses. 
The remaining fluid is buttermilk, a fluid slightly acid, and of a very 
agreeable flavor, containing the larger portion of the caseous element 
of the cream coagulated, and also a certain portion of the fatty 
principle which has not been separated. 

The globules of milk appear, from the latest microscopical ob- 
servations,! to be formed essentially of fatty matter, surrounded with 
a delicate, elastic, transparent pellicle. In the course of the agita- 
tion or trituration of churning, these delicate pellicles give way, and 
then the globules of oil or fatty matter are left free to cohere, which 
they were prevented from doing previously, by the interposition of 
the delicate film or covering of the several globules. Were the 
butter simjjly suspended in the state of emulsion in the milk, we 
should certainly expect that it would separate on the application of 
heat ; but tliis it does not : cream or milk may be brought to the 
boiling point, and even boiled for some time, without a particle of 
oil appearing. Could M. Romanet show any of these pellicles, 
apart from the oil-globules they enclose, it would be very satisfacto- 
ry, and would certainly enable us to explain the eflect of churning. 

Churning is a longer or shorter process, according to a variety of 

* Thaer, Principes, &c., t. iv. p. .141. 
t M. Romanet, MSS. 



MILK. 385 

circumstances ; it succeeds best between 55° and 60° F. So that, 
in summer, a cool place, and in winter a warm place, is chosen for 
the operation. There is no absorption of oxygen during the process 
of churning, as was once supposed ; the operation succeeds perform- 
ed in vacuo, and with the churn filled with carbonic acid or hydro- 
gen gas. 

On being taken out of the churn, the butter is kneaded and press- 
ed, and even washed under fair water, to free it as much as possible 
from the buttermilk and curd which it always contains, and to the 
presence of which must be ascribed the speedy alteration which 
butter undergoes in warm weather. To preserve fresh butter it is 
absolutely necessary to melt it, in order to get rid of all moisture, 
and at the same time to separate the caseous portion. This is the 
process employed to keep fresh butter in all the warmer countries 
of the world. In some districts of the continent, it is also had re- 
course to with the same view. The butter is thrown into a clean 
cast-iron pot, and fire is applied. By and by the melted mass enters 
into violent ebullition, which is owing to the disengagement of wa- 
tery vapor ; it is stirred continually to favor the escape of the steam, 
and the fire is moderated. When all ebullition has ceased, the fire 
is withdrawn, and the melted butter is run upon a strainer, by which 
all the curd is retained. M. Clouet has proposed to clarify butter 
by melting it at a temperature between 120° and 140° F., and keep- 
ing it so long melted as to dissipate the water and secure the depo- 
sition of the cheesy matter, after which the clear melted butter 
would be decanted. I doubt whether by this means the water could 
be sufficiently got rid of, a very important condition in connection 
with the keeping of butter, though certainly all the caseum would 
be deposited. 

The moisture and curd contained in fresh butter may amount to- 
gether to about 18 per cent. ; at least we find that we lose about 18 
lbs. upon every 100 lbs. weight of butter which we melt at Bechel- 
bronn. 

The information which we have on the produce in butter and 
cheese, from different samples of milk, is very discordant, so that 
I prefer giving the results of a single experiment made under my 
own eyes. From 100 lbs. weight of milk, we obtained : 

Cream 15.60 lbs. 

White curd cheese 8.93 " 

Whey 75.47 " 

100.00 

The 15.60 lbs. of cream yielded by churning: 

3.3 lbs. butter, or 21.2 per cent., and 
12.27 " buttermilk. 

The reckoning with reference to 100 lbs. of milk, consequently 
stands thus : ^ 

Cheese 8.93 

Butter 3.33 

Buttermilk 12.27 

Whey 75.47 

100.0 
33 



386 FOOD AND FEEDING. 

Taking the whole of the milk obtained and treated at diflerent 
seasons of the year, I find that 36,000 lbs. of milk yielded 1080 lbs. 
of fresh butter, which is at the rate of 3 per cent. From the state- 
ment of M. Baude, it appears that near Geneva a proportion of 
butter so high as 3 per cent, is never obtained, probably because 
there a larger proportion of fatty matter is left in the cheese. In 
the dairy of Cartigny, 2200 gallons of milk gave : 

Butter 303 lbs. or about 1.6 per cent 

Gruyere cheese 1315 " 6.9 " 

Clot from the whey, obtained by boiling 1140 " 5.2 " 

In the same neighborhood, another dairy, that of LuUin, gave from 

the same quantity of milk : 

Butter 418 lbs. or 1.9 per cent. 

Cheese 1485 67.5 " 

Clot from whey 968 4.4 " * 

OF THE FOOD OF ANIMALS AND FEEDING. 

The identity, in point of composition and properties, which ap- 
pears to obtain between certain substances derived from either king- 
dom of nature, naturally led to the conclusion that animals do not 
form or originate the substances which enter into their organization, 
but that they find these ready formed in their food, and merely ap- 
propriate them ; whence we must conclude, that herbivorous animals 
assimilate several of the proximate principles of plants immediately, 
causing them to undergo but slight modifications, and that the ele- 
ments of the animal tissues and fluids pre-exist in vegetables, which 
further contain the earthy phosphate that forms the distinguishing 
characteristic in bone.t 

The food of herbivorous animals must, therefore, always contain, 
and in fact always contains, four essential principles, which, by their 
combination or reunion, constitute nutritious matter, properly so 
called : — 1st. An azotized matter, such as albumen, caseine, gluten, 
substances which are probably the original of flesh. 2d. An oily or 
fatty matter, which approaches more or less closely to fatty bodies 
in general. 3d. A substance having a ternary composition, sugar, 
gum, fecula. 4th. Certain salts, particularly phosphates of lime, 
magnesia, and iron. This mixed constitution, which a forage plant 
must needs ofiler, justifies the general ideas propounded by Dr. Prout 
on nutrition. This able chemist has said that milk was to be viewed 
as the standard food, and that all alimentary matters must resemble 
it in composition, in greater or less degree : that is to say, besides 
phosphates, food must contain an azotized principle, a non-azotized 
principle, and a fatty body, to stand in lieu of caseum, sugar, and 
butter. 

The fundamental principle that animals find the several substances 
which make up their bodies, ready formed in the substances they 

* In all the dairy counties of En^!lund, the milk is never required, like the ground, ta 
give a double crop ; it >ields either butter or cheese, not both. Hence the greater rich- 
ness of English cheese in general.— Eno. Ed. 

t Dumas and Boussingault. The Chemical and Physiological Balance of Organic 
Nature, post 8vo. London. Bailli^rc, 1843. (A yery useful little work.— Eno. Ed.J 



FOOD AND FEEDING. 387 

consume, seems very well calculated to assist the practical farmer 
in managing the food of the animals upon his land ; for if flesh, fat, 
and bone exist all but ready formed in the food, it is obvious that 
the best kind will be that precisely which, under the same weight, 
contains the largest quantity of the various matters of the organi- 
zation. 

It is by no means easy to ascertain precisely the amount of the 
azotized constituents, gluten, and albumen, contained in plants ; to 
do so requires both time and pains. But let it be once admitted that 
the nutritive properties of forage increase in the precise ratio of 
these matters, this is clearly as much as to say that the value is in 
proportion to the quantity of azote contained in the food, and that it 
becomes a matter of the highest moment to have at hand a ready 
mode of determining the point. I believe it infinitely better to get 
at the quantit)^ of azote immediately, which is easily done, than by 
any roundabout and laborious process to ascertain the amount of 
albumen and gluten : the quantity of azote ascertained, it is most 
easy to deduce the quantity of albumen and gluten — in other words, 
of flesh — contained in each particular species of food examined ; for, 
as a general rule, vegetable food does not contain any other azotized 
principle. It is true, indeed, that all the azotized principles of vege- 
table origin cannot be considered as nutritious ; some of them, on 
the contrary, are virulent poisons or active medicines, according to 
the dose in which they are administered. But these poisonous sub- 
stances are not met with in appreciable quantity in the plants which 
are commonly grown for the food either of man or beast. Still, all 
the truly nutritious articles of food contain an azotized principle. 
The experiments of M. Magendie have shown, that substances which 
contain no azote, such as sugar, starch, oil, will not support life ; 
and, on the other hand, it is ascertained that the quality of alimentary 
matter, flour for example, increases with the amount of gluten which 
it contains. It is because the seeds of the leguminous vegetables 
are richer in azotized principles — that is, in fleih — that they are also 
more highly nutritious than the seeds of the cereals. 

These several considerations, therefore, induce me to conclude, 
that the nutritious principles of plants and their products reside in 
their azotized principles, and consequently that their nutritious pow- 
ers are in proportion to the quantity of azote they contain. From 
what precedes, however, it is obvious that I am far from regarding 
azotized principles alone as sufficient for the nutrition of animals ; 
but it is a fact, that every highly azotized vegetable nutritive sub- 
stance is generally accompanied by the other organic and inorganic 
substances which concur in nutrition. 

In seeking to learn the precise quantity of azote contained in a 
great number of articles used as food for cattle, I have had it in 
view particularly to find a standard or fixed point for estimating their 
comparative nutritive properties. It is long since more than one of 
the most distinguished farmers, both of England and Germany, 
essayed to resolve this important problem in rural economy. Thus 
Thaer and many others have given tables of the quantities by weight 



388 FOOD AND FEEDING. 

in which one article of alimentation might be substituted for another. 
These tables are in fact tables of equivalents with reference to food. 
But it is unfortunate that there should be considerable diversity of 
statement among their authors. Yet, even up to the present time, 
it could not well have been otherwise, and these discrepancies will 
only surprise those who are unacquainted with the difficulties of the 
subject. One grand cause of difference probably exists in the de- 
gree of dryness of the article subjected to experiment. The nature 
of the soil, a very dry or very rainy season, the climate, &c., must 
all be regarded as so many causes influencing the quantity of water 
contained in plants, and in consequence their actual nutritive quali- 
ties. The only sure mode of proceeding, in short, appears to be, to 
reduce the several articles to a state of complete dryness, and to 
make their quantity in this condition the first element in the reckoning. 
I may slate, that the theoretical data obtained by proceeding in this 
way have already been approved by practical applications. 

Hay may be assumed as the most common or universally used of 
all kinds of fodder : it is in some sort the staple food of the animals 
that are particularly attached to an agricultural concern, and may 
therefore be appropriately made the standard of comparison for all 
other kinds of food or forage. Hay itself, however, varies greatly 
in point of quality : in assuming it as the standard, I have therefore 
to state, that meadow hay of good quality is to be understood. The 
analyses which I have made of this article at difl^erent times, satisfy 
me that in the state in which it is commonly used, it contains from 
1.0 to 1.5 of azote per cent. In choosing a specimen for analysis, 
it is, of course, highly necessary tliat it be an average specimen ; 
that it consist of equal or rather relative proportions of the several 
elements which enter into its constitution, such as stalks, leaves, 
flowers, and seeds. Taking a sample of hay, for instance, weighing 
exactly 5 lbs. avoird., I found that it was made up of — 

Hiinl woody stems 2.393 lbs. 

Bottoms of leaves and very fine stems 0.847 

Flowers, leaves, and a few seeds 1.760 

5.000 
The ultimate analysis of which gave : 

Of azote per cent. 1.19 

Military contract hay of 1840 gave of azote per cent 1.21 

Hay made in Alsace in 183,i " " 1.04 

Hay made in Alsace in 1837 " " 1.15 

Average of azote per 100 1.15 

Hay, as it is generally used, contains from 11 to 12 per cent, of 
water, which is got rid of by thorough drying. And as albumen, 
caseum, and vegetable gluten contain 16 per cent, of azote, we 
perceive that the azotized matter which is the representative of 
Jlesh, in hay may be represented by the number 7.2 per cent. Hay 
does not, indeed, always contain so much azote ; that which is won 
from marshy lands contains much less; and again there are samples 
that contain more. After-math, or second-crop hay, is certainly 
more nutritious than first-crop hay, a fact which we have ascertained 



FOOD AND FEEDING. 389 

repeatedly at Bechelbronn ; but this hay is nevertheless held less 
suitable for horses, probably because, being made late in the season, 
it is commonly stacked more or less damp, and suffers change in 
consequence : 

After-math hay gave 2.0 per cent, of azote 

A choice sample of the best hay 1.29 " 

The flower or ear, containing little woody stem- •• -2.1 " 

These examples suffice to show, that when an animal is to be put 
upon another kind of food than hay, it is very necessary to take the 
quality of the latter article, which has been employed, into the ac- 
count. In the table which I shall immediately present, I have as- 
sumed good meadow-hay, containing 1.15 of azote and 11 of water 
per cent, for my standard. The importance of a table of equivalents 
for forage has long been felt by farmers ; and they who have given 
their attention to the accumulation of data for its construction, de- 
serve our best thanks. The use of a table of equivalents is extreme- 
ly simple : the numbers placed underneath the value of hay in- 
dicate the weights of the several kinds of forage named in the first 
column, which may respectively be substituted for 100 parts of hay 
by weight. Thus, according to Block, 366 lbs. of carrots may be 
substituted for 100 lbs. of meadow-hay. Pabst holds 60 lbs. of oats 
to be equivalent to 100 lbs. of hay. If the question be to replace 
7.26 or 7;f lbs. of oats in the ration of a horse by Jerusalem arti- 
chokes, we find in the table that 60 of oats are equivalent to 274 
Jerusalem potatoes, and we therefore infer that 35.2, say 35| lbs. 
is the weight of the root to be substituted for that of the oats. 

Certain information on the nutritive value of the various articles 
consumed by cattle as food, is really of high importance in rural 
economy ; it is obviously the only guide for the feeder in the use or 
purchase of forage. Let us suppose, for example, that a measure of 
potatoes (22 gallon.?) weighing 165 lbs. is worth lOd. at market, 
and that hay is worth 2s. 6d. the cwt. ; 2 cwts. or rather 220 lbs. 
would cost 55. Let us now admit, on theoretical grounds, that this 
quantity of hay is equivalent to 693 lbs. of potatoes; it plainly ap- 
pears, on looking at the cost of these equivalents, that there would 
be a positive advantage in using potatoes, inasmuch as they are 
worth no more than 3^. 6^d. There would indeed be money to be 
made by selling hay, and purchasing its equivalent in potatoes. 

The equivalents which I have deduced from my elementary ana- 
lyses, agree on many occasions with the conclusions of practical 
men ; in others, they differ notably from them ; at the same time it 
must be observed, that the practical equivalents differ from one 
another in at least an equal degree. We see, for instance, that 
Schnee and Thaer think 220 lbs. of hay will be replaced by 1465 
lbs. of wheat straw, while Floltow gives 429 lbs. as the equivalent 
number. According to Mayer, 630 lbs. of turnip are equivalent to 
220 lbs. of hay, while Middleton gives 1760 as the equivalent num- 
ber of turnips, a number which coincides remarkably with that infer- 
red from theory. Block assigns 66 as the equivalent number of 
peas. Thaer makes it more than twice as high, viz. 145. Mangel 

33* 



390 FOOD AND FEEDING. 

wurzel, according to Thaer, is represented by 1012; while Mayer 
and Pabst call it but 550, and M. do Donibasle states it a little high- 
er, viz. 574. However higiily we estimate the difliculties of com- 
ing to accurate conclusions on the subject of alimentation or feeding, 
it is not easy to account for such discrepancies among practical 
men ; and then, as to the astonishing similarity which their conclu- 
sions bear to one another upon many heads, it is impossible to over- 
look the fact, that the resemblance is far more in appearance than 
in fact ; for it is notorious, that the generality of those who have 
committed themselves to writing have generally copied each other. 
Indeed, it is not always very obvious wliether the equivalent number 
which we find assumed, has been determined by the farmer from his 
own observation or experience, or has been adopted from some other 
observer. No one who is not a total stranger to the art of making 
experiments will ever be brought to believe that eleven experiment- 
ers, operating separately, could have fallen plump upon the number 
90 as the equivalent for lucern, or even that any five of them could 
have lighted upon 600, neither more nor less, as the equivalent num- 
ber for cabbage ! 

The method which I have myself pursued, that namely of infer- 
ring the nutritious quality from the contents in azote, is far from 
being free from objection ; on the whole, it may be said to place the 
equivalents somewhat too low, inasmuch as by the process of ele- 
mentary analysis, the quantity of azote is apt to come out a little too 
high, some portion of it being derived from the nitrates present in 
vegetables, which are certainly of no avail in nutrition. This is the 
source to which I ascribe the anomaly presented by the leaves of 
mangel-wurzel. And, then, it is not to be forgotten that in dosing 
the azote we have regard but to the Jlcsh contained in the article of 
food, which although unquestionably the principle that is of highest 
value, and the one which is apt to be most deficient, is still not all. 
The neutral non-azotized substances, starch, sugar, gum, oil, are in- 
dispensable as auxiliaries in the alimentation of cattle ; the three 
first undergo changes in the course of the digestive process which 
fit them to be absorbed immediately, and the oil is brought to the 
state of an emulsion, and so is taken up and adds to the fat. The 
woody fibre alone of vegetables appears to have no direct share in 
the nutrition of animals ; it is discovered almost or altogether un- 
changed in the dejections. 

It is therefore every thing but matter of indifTerence whether a par- 
ticular article of forage contains a larger or a smaller proportion of 
starch, sugar, &c., associated with a given quantity of azotizcd or 
truly animalized matter. The potato and meadow-hay brought to 
the same state of dryness, contain as nearly as possible the same 
proportions of azote — from 1.3 to 1.5 per cent.; in other words, about 
8^ per cent, of albumen and j^iiten, /. c, of flesh. But in the pota- 
to, almost tiie whole of the 91' per cent, of the remainder consists 
of starch ; while in hay it is woody fibre, inert matter as we must 
presume it, that is present in by far the largest proportion. And 
this explains the higher value of the same weigiit of dry potato as 



FOOD yViND FEEDIA'G. 391 

an article of sustenance. To give our theoretical equivalents all 
the precision that is really desirable, it would be necessary to as- 
certain the quantity of organic matter which escaped digestion with 
reference to each particular species of food. This is an inquiry 
which it is my purpose to enter upon by and by. The labor com- 
pleted, we should then be in possession of tables in regard to the 
proportion of the non-azotized as well as the azotized principles ; 
and further, to the quantity of inert matter which it would be proper 
to deduct from the weight of the ration allowed in each case. 

To have determined the azote in an article of food, then, is not 
to have done all that is strictly necessary : still azote is the scarce 
element in all kinds of vegetable food ; starch, gum, sugar, pectine, 
oil, are universally present, and generally in adequate quantity. As 
articles, as unlike one another as possible, I have mentioned pota- 
toes and meadow hay. Now the theory indicates 300 of the root for 
100 of the dried grass ; and I can state positively, from long and re- 
peated observation, that it is not advisable in practice to substitute 
less than 280 of potatoes for 100 of meadow-hay. 

The state of dryness of certain kinds of forage may have a mark- 
ed influence on their nutritious qualities. They may even decline 
in nutritive value by the process of drying, so that analysis of itself 
may lead us into error in regard to the nutritive value of dry articles 
of food. Breeders have in fact long suspected that green fodder is 
more nutritious than dry fodder; that grass, clover, &c., lose nutri- 
tious matter by being made into hay. That the thing is so in fact, 
appears to have been demonstrated by a skilful agriculturist, well 
acquainted with the art of experimenting,* who found that 9 lbs. of 
green lucern were quite equal in foddering sheep to 3^^ lbs. of the 
same forage made into hay, while he at the same time ascertained 
that 9 lbs. of green lucern would not on an average yield more than 
2.02 lbs. of hay. In allowing each sheep 3^^ lbs. of lucern hay as 
its ration,* consequently, it was as if the animal had had 14.34 or 
more than 14| lbs. of the green vegetable for its allowance. 

These practical facts are obviously of great importance ; they 
prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the belief of agriculturists in 
general as to the immense advantages of consuming clover and lu- 
cern as green meat is well founded. Nor is this all ; it is not mere- 
ly the absolutely greater feeding value of the crop green than of the 
crop dried and made into hay; there is further, the saving of ex- 
pense in making the hay, and still further, the escape of all risk from 
loss through bad weather during the process, by which that which 
was valuable fodder but a few days before, may become fit only for 
the dung-hill. Still, because 100 of green clover or lucern repre- 
sent 23 of the same articles dried, it does not follow that the feeding 
properties of the fodder in each of the two states can be truly re- 
presented by the ratios of these numbers to one another. Messrs. 
Perrault find from their experiments that the true relation is 8 to 3. 
By assuming 71.5 lbs. as the quantity of dry forage obtained from 

* M. Perrauli de Jotemps, in Joiun. d'Agricnlt. v. iii. p. 97. 



392 FOOD ANO FEEDING. 

220 lbs. of green clover or lucern, the quantity which is actually 
obtained on an average, the ratio comes out 8 to 2.G, a number which 
falls somewhat short of that which is assumed, but not much. With 
regard to the difference in the feeding or nutritive value of green 
and dried fodder, the loss may in a general way be ascribed to loss 
of the more substantial parts of the plants especially experienced in 
the process of drying. This is the conclusion, at all events, to which 
M. Crud came ; I have myself, however, found that clover-hay, 
made in the field and ricked in tlie usual way, had not the same 
nutritive value as a quantity of the same crop carefully dried in the 
laboratory. 

By way of pendant to the conclusions of Messrs. Perrault, from 
their valuable observations, I shall here add the average of some 
experiments that were made at Bechelbronn, in 1841, on the con- 
version of clover into clover-hay. The clover crops of this season 
were magnificent ; the plant in its second year growing to more than 
a yard in height. Green clover on the average may be considered 
as consisting of: 

Clover-hay 29.85 

Water 70.15 

100.00 

As extremes in our experiments of 1841, we add : 

Clover-hay 35.7 25.0 

Water 64.3 76.0 

100.0 100.0 

Analysis gave the number 75 as the nutritive equivalent number 
of clover-hay. Assuming 76 to represent the moisture lost during 
the drying, the equivalent becomes 311 for the same fodder in the 
green state, meadow-hay, the standard, being 100. 

But practice is not here in harmony with theory ; th^ value of 
clover-hay, in point of nutritive power, is found not to differ essen- 
tially from that of meadow-hay ; and the equivalent of green clover 
is generally placed between 425 and 500. And I may say, that 
daily experience in the stable tends to show that the theoretical 
equivalent of clover-hay is too high, that its nutritious properties are 
not so great as they are inferred to be. From a mean of four 
weighings, I find that four cows upon green clover consume 2499 
lbs., or 624 J lbs. each per diem. The usual allowance to one of 
our cows, however, is 33 lbs. of hay of good quality ; from which 
it would follow, that the equivalent of green clover would be 445. 
But the animals on the green fodder fattened apace, and every thing 
showed that they were very differently nourished than they would 
have been with their 33 lbs. of meadow-hay. According to theo- 
retical data, each cow in its 624^ lbs. of green food per day received 
an equivalent of 47.3 lbs. of hay ; and if it be considered, that during 
the season of green forage they have it almost at will, it must be 
conceded that during this period the quantity of food consumed is 
actually greater than when it is regularly doled out. Additional ex- 



FOOD A?>.'D FEEDING. 393 

periments are therefore necessary to decide the question as to 
whether forage eaten green is really more nutritious than the same 
forage consumed when converted into hay. For my own part, I 
should not be surprised, from what I have seen, were it found that 
dry fodder, previously moistened and carefully portioned out, was 
actually more nourishing than the same food would have been had 
it been eaten green. Green forage, of a very soft or watery nature, 
is notoriously possessed of purgative properties, which must lessen 
its value as food ; but my observation leads me to say, on the other 
hand, that animals kept upon dry fodder require more care with re- 
gard to watering than is generally bestowed upon them. The abso- 
lute necessity of a sufficient degree of moistness in the food, in order 
to secure its due and easy digestion, greatly countenances the prac- 
tice which is beginning to be introduced in some places of steeping 
hay for some time in water before giving it to cattle. This neces- 
sity further explains the great advantages in associating with dried 
fodder other very watery articles, such as roots and tubers, turnips 
and field-beet, potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes. 

The oleaginous seeds contain a considerable proportion of animal- 
ized matter, similar in composition and qualities to the caseum of 
milk ; and the cake which comes from the oil-mill retains almost 
the whole of this substance. The proportion of from 0.05 to 0.06 
of azote, indicates nearly 42 per cent, of the representative of flesh 
in oil-cake. Theory, in fact, rates the nutritious power of this sub- 
stance so high, that 100 of hay may be replaced by from 22 to 27 
of cake. 

The almost universal use of oil-cake in the feeding and fattening 
of cattle, is of itself sufficient evidence of its highly nutritive quali- 
ties. It has even been found possible to keep sheep and oxen upon 
this food almost exclusively. M. Bouscaren finding considerable 
difficulty in getting rid of his oil-cake, thought of associating with 
his oil-mill an establishment for feeding cattle ; and he found that 
oxen put up to fatten throve perfectly upon a mixture of the refuse 
of the wine-press and oil-cake. Cows, upon a diet of this kind, give 
on an average 12j pints of milk per diem. The allowance per head 
is about 15 lbs. of oil-cake in three meals, given each time imme- 
diately after the animals have been watered, and in the interval, 
each is allowed about 12 lbs. of straw or chaff. The cake broken 
in pieces is steeped in water, and worked up into a paste of the 
consistency of dough. If the animals show any disinclination to 
this food at first, they are brought to like it by having a ball of it, 
the size of the fist, administered to them two or three times. 

Supposing that the cows fed in this way would be adequately 
maintained upon 33 lbs. of hay, and that 13 lbs. of straw are equiv- 
alent to 3 lbs. of hay, it appears that in the allowance given, 15 lbs. 
of oil-cake will supply the place of 30 lbs. of hay ; the equivalent 
of the cake, therefore, is 51.5, a number very different from the 22 
deduced from analysis. The equivalents of those who have sought 
to appreciate the alimentary value of oil-cake are, however, suffi- 
ciently at variance with one another. It will be seen in the table, 



394 FOOD AND FEEDING. 

that the numbers assigned by difTerent authorities are 42, 57, and 
108 ; and M. PerranU, from direct experiment, found the equivalent 
number of colza-cake to be 30, analysis giving 23 as the theoretical 
number. On the whole, it may be said, that in practice, the results, 
although sufficiently diflerent, still agree in ascribing to oil-cake a 
nutritive value inferior to that indicated by theory. 

I have thought it important to insist upon the discrepancy which 
is here so conspicuous between the inferences from chemical analy- 
sis and those arrived at by experience, because it appears to me to 
depend upon a particular circumstance which frequently intervenes 
in the feeding of cattle, and which it is very important to be aware 
of: I allude to the influence of tlie bulk of the allowance of food. 

Vegetable food of every description has nearly the same specific 
gravity ; it is but little above that of water ; tiie bulk of the allow- 
ance therefore depends upon its weight. Every one will conceive 
tiiat a ration of highly nutritious food, which for this reason would 
occupy but little space, would be open to many objections. A cart- 
horse, of the ordinary size, from what I have myself repeatedly 
observed, requires from 26 to 33 lbs. of solid food, and about the 
same quantity of water in the twenty-four hours. The bulk of this 
allowance, when masticated and brought to the state in which it is 
swallowed, will be upwards of 9^ cubic feet. Now, if for the ordi- 
nary forage, one that is five times more nutritious were substituted, 
oil-cake, for example, the dry ration, according to the rule of equiv- 
alents, would be reduced to 6.6, or a little more than 4^ lbs., and its 
bulk would not surpass 5| cubic feet. The animal would not feel 
satisfied with this allowance, it would still ft<-el hungry, or the food 
given in such a concentrated siiape would disagree with it. If, on 
the contrary, a forage that is very little nutritious were substituted, 
such as wlieat-straw, the equivalent of which is 500, the ration 
would then become too bulky to be eaten in the course of a day, it 
would amount to as many as 165 lbs. It is therefore absolutely ne- 
cessary to take into consideration the bulk of the food allowed : the 
belly must of necessity be filled; whatever the nutritive value of 
any article, it must be given in a certain quantity ; and in the case 
of such a substance as oil-cake, the consumption to fill the stomach 
would cease to be in any kind of proportion to the nutritive e(iuiv- 
alent. 

It is extremely difiicult to appreciate the precise limits beyond 
which an article of forage or a given ration ceases to be nutritious. 
\\'hen any addition is made to an allowance known and admitted to 
be sulficient, the eflect of the extra quantity is scarcely perceptible ; 
so that, in practice, we are apt to fall into the error of estimating at 
too low a rate the nutritious powers of food given in too large quan- 
tities. I have had proof of this in a scries of experiments on the 
maintenance of a number of milch-kine. To a cow which was 
receiving the equivalent of 33 lbs. of meadow-hay in dry fodder and 
Jerusalem potatoes, an addition was made of 6.j lbs. of oil-cake, by 
which the allowance of nourishment was doui)led theoretically ; the 
animal only ate the half of the cake, however : still, the quality of 



FOOD AND FEEDING. 395 

the milk was not improved. Experience here would compel us to 
set down the 3f lbs. of cake consumed as nil ; yet it is positively 
ascertained that the article is one of the most substantial known. 

The hard and husky grain which is given to cattle frequently 
escapes digestion, because it has escaped the teeth — a circumstance 
which leads to the formation of an estimate of its nutritious quali- 
ties inferior to those it actually possesses. To prevent this loss, 
oats are now often bruised, as are beans and peas also ; or they are 
mixed with chopped hay or straw, which the animals are compelled 
to chew thoroughly before they can swallow it ; or the corn is 
steamed or steeped in boiling water before it is put into the manger. 
Some experiments that were instituted by order of the French vete- 
rinary commission, however, seemed to show, that the loss of corn 
from passing through the stomach and bowels unchanged was really 
so trifling, that it might be safely left out of the account. 

Tubers and roots are invaluable fodder for horned cattle, and in 
the course of the winter, come instead of hay to a considerable 
extent. Our experience at Bechelbronn also enables us to say, that 
horses are readily brought to a regimen of the same description, 
which, judiciously instituted, becomes the means of great economy 
in the maintenance of these animals. 

Roots, turnips, and mangel-wurzel, are frequently thrown down 
whole before the animals. It is vastly better ; nay, it is so much 
better that it ought to be made an invariable rule never to give them 
save cut into slices and mixed with cut straw or chaft'. There is 
always a great advantage in combining any very soft and watery 
article of food with one that is dry and hard, to say nothing of the 
chaff absorbing and rendering useful the juices that would escape 
and be lost. 

Mangel-wurzel, turnips, carrots, and Jerusalem potatoes, are 
always given raw. The potato is frequently steamed or boiled first ; 
yet 1 can say positively that horned cattle do extremely well upon 
raw potatoes ; and at Bechelbronn, our cows never have them other- 
wise than raw : they are never boiled, save for horses and hogs. 
The best mode of dealing with them is to steam them ; they need 
never be thoroughly boiled as when they are to serve for the food 
of man. The steamed or boiled potatoes are crushed between two 
rollers, or simply broken with a wooden spade or dolly, and mixed 
with cut hay or straw or chaff before being served out. It may not 
be unnecessary to observe, that by steaming, potatoes lose no weight ; 
whence we conclude that the nutritive equivalent for the boiled is 
the same as that for the raw tuber. Nevertheless, it is possible that 
the amylaceous principle is rendered more readily assimilable by 
boiling, and that by this means the tubers actually become more 
nutritious. Some have proposed to roast potatoes in the oven ; and 
there can be little question but that, treated in this way, they answer 
admirably for fattening hogs or even oxen. Done in tlie oven, pota- 
toes may be brought into a state in which they may perfectly supply 
the place of corn in the foddering of horses and other cattle. 
There is but the expense of the firing to be taken into the account. 



396 FOOD AND FEEDING. 

The only mode of ascertaining tlie favorable or unfavorable influ- 
ence of any particular system of diet or regimen upon animals, is 
by weighing them. In regard to full-grown animals performing 
regular work, such as cart and plough horses, and to milch-kine, the 
allowance ought to be such as will maintain them at the same or 
nearly the same weight. Any thing like stinting is immediately 
followed by loss of flesh and of weight, of strength and spirit, in the 
animal. The allowance being continued the same, similar effects 
will follow any increase of work, any exaction of unusual effort on 
the part of the animal. An essential condition, therefore, in all 
experiments on the due dieting or feeding of animals, is, that they be 
performed under precisely similar conditions of labor. Young ani- 
mals receiving a sufficiency of wholesome food, increase from day 
to day by a quantity which we shall have occasion immediately to 
mention ; and all changes of regimen are followed at once by notable 
variations in the ratio of the growth ; if the new regimen be less 
nutritious than that which went before it, the balance immediately 
proclaims the fact. 

Cattle put up to fatten are always supplied with a superfluity of 
fodder ; the excess may be regarded as an addition to the quantity 
requisite to maintain them in health and strength. The increase in 
the weight of an animal is often so great within a given time, as to 
be very appreciable by weighings made even at very close interrals ; 
the balance also shows us that the rate of increase varies at different 
periods of the interval during which the fattening is going on. An 
animal put up to fatten for the butcher, is not the best subject for 
coming to conclusions upon in regard to the nutritive value of dif- 
ferent articles of sustenance ; still it is useful, in a practical point 
of view, to determine the influence of this and of that course of 
regimen on the production of fat. Any misapplication of nutritive 
equivalents is speedily proclaimed by the animal's losing weight, 
instead of maintaining or gaining upon the amount to which it had 
attained. 

When the quantity of fodder has been ascertained which an ani- 
mal ought to have in the twenty-four hours to maintain it in full 
health and vigor, or that may be necessary to enable it to lay on 
additional flesh and fat, it is to be weighed, and the article or mix- 
ture of articles which it is the business of the experimenter to try, 
is to be given in part or in whole. After the lapse of a certain 
time the animal is weighed again, and the weight upon this occasion 
enables us to say whether the new or amended ration is superior, 
equal, or inferior, to that which had preceded it. Such is the pro- 
cedure generally followed : but in putting it in practice myself, I 
saw that it was liable to lead to rather serious mistakes, which I 
then used every effort to diminish or to nullify in the experiments 
which I undertook on the keep of horses — experiments which I 
think interesting enough to deserve being particularly related. 

In a considerable number of observations with which I had be- 
come familiar, I saw that the course had not always been continued 
for a sufficient length of time ; so that changes which were the 



FOOD AND FEEDING. 



397 



effect of mere accident must frequently have been ascribed to the 
effects of regimen. In a general way, it is acknowledged that an 
adult animal, upon the ration that is known to be adequate for its 
maintenance, returns at the same hour every day to the yesterday's 
weight : this, however, is only strictly true in reference to a series 
of weighings continued through a number of days, to make any 
irregularity between one weighing and another disappear. 

With a view to discovering the amount of variation which an 
animal experiences in point of weight when it is fed in the same 
uniform manner, is foddered precisely at the same hours, ^c.,^ 
weighed a horse and a mare, which were leading the most regular 
and unvaried life possible, for they were both employed in working 
an exhausting machine for several days in succession, the weighings 
being performed at noon each day before they were watered, and 
from four to five hours after their breakfast. Here are the results 
in a tabular form : 



Date of the weighings. 


Weight of the 
horse. 


Weight of the 
mare. 




kil. lbs. avoird. 

453.0 996.6 

4.55.0 

456.0 

454.0 

449.0 988.9 

449.5 

449.0 

454.0 

454.0 998.8 

459.5 1010.9 

448.0 985.6 

452.0 994.4 

454.0 

448.0 

452.5 


kit. lbs. avoird. 
494.0 1086.8 
497.0 
497.0 

497.5 1092.7 
487.0 
487.5 
492.0 
496.5 
484.5 1065.9 

490.5 

496.0 

491.0 

484.0 10G4.8 

491.0 


17 " " 


18 " " 


19 " " 


20 " " 


21 " " 


22 " " 


23 " " 


24 " " 


25 " " 


27 " " 


28 " " 


29 " " 


30 " " 


31 " <i 


Mean weights 

Maxima 


452.0 994.4 
459.5 1010.9 
448.0 985.6 


491.8 1081.9 
497.5 1092.7 
484.0 1064.8 


Greatest difference above the mean 

Greatest dilTerence below the mean 

Difference between the extreme weights. . 


16.5 

8.8 

7.7 


10.8 
17.1 
6.3 



Another horse (Old Fox) 12 years old, taken fasting, at four 
o'clock in the morning of the 28th of April, 1842, weighed 1051 
lbs. ; at the same hour of the 29th, he weighed 1060 lbs. ; ditto on 
the 29th, 1038 lbs. 

It is obvious, therefore, that a horse foddered most regularly and 
weighed at the same hour, nevertheless presents differences in his 
weight that may amount to nearly 30 lbs. ; and which, without as- 
surance of this fact, we should be disposed to ascribe to the effect 
of our regimen. This is enough to satisfy us that in all experi- 
ments upon feeding, it is absolutely necessary to carry them on for 
some considerable time, in order to escape, or at all events to lessen 
the errors that would be introduced into the conclusions by these ac- 
cideiltal differences of weight. They may vary with reference to 

34 



398 MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 

different animals ; they are necessarily smaller in amount among 
those that are young and small, such as calves and sheep, than in 
adult oxen and horses ; but they do not occur the less on that ac- 
count, and must, therefore, occasion errors of the same description. 
What, then, shall we say of those small variations in the weight in 
a ewe or a ram, amounting perhaps to 1^ or 2 lbs., ascertained in 
tlie course of an experiment carried over two or three days, though 
conducted with the most scrupulous attention to accuracy in the 
World ] That they may very possibly have been purely accidental. 
The first in every series of experiments on the maintenance of 
animals, ought in fact to have it in view to ascertain the amount of 
accidental variation in the weight of the creatures which are their 
subjects ; as this variation is now on this side now on that, there is 
au obvious advantage in having a certain number upon trial at a 
time ; any error that occurs will thus be more apt to be corrected ; 
and the results may be held more worthy of confidence in propor- 
tion as the numbers have been large from which they have been de- 
duced - Another cause of error, which I had occasion to discover 
in the course of my experiments, appears to be connected with the 
weight of the allowance. Equal in nutritious value, different allow- 
ances may still have very different weights ; it is obvious, that a ra- 
tion of hay and corn will weigh much less than its equivalent in 
roots, tubers, or green meat. Animals that have been kept for some 
time upon a dry diet, if put on one that is very bulky and watery, 
will immediately increase very considerably in weight ; and their 
increase is both so sudden and so great, that it is impossible to as- 
cribe it to augmented nutrition, to tlesh and fat laid on. The ani- 
mals are simply distended, their paunch and bowels are filled with a 
larger quantity of food than they were before ; and the state of dis- 
tension continues, though it suffers accidental variations, so long as 
tlie new course of feeding is persisted in. In opposite circum- 
stances, as when animals that have been long upon soft and watery 
food, are suddenly put upon hard diet, they always drop very con- 
siderably in weight. These sudden changes throw disorder and 
contradiction into the conclusions, and puzzled me greatly until I 
discovered their cause. It is obvious that no kind of reliance can 
be placed upon the conclusions which have been come to from single 
weighings made at the end of each particular course of alimentation. 
To get at results which shall be worthy of any credit, the animals 
that are to be made the subjects of experiment must be fed for sev- 
eral days upon the particular ration that is to be approved, in order 
to be brought to the state of body which may be said to belong in 
particular to each system of dieting, before being weighed ; it is 
only when this is attained, indeed, that the experiment can be held 
to be properly begun ; and then it is to be continued for a sufficient 
length of time to lessen the inllucnce of those accidental variations 
of weight, of which I have spoken so particularly. It is perhaps 
needless to observe, that any increase in weight and the maintenance 
of that increase, are not always of themselves sufficient signs for 
affirming that the course then followed is superior or equal to the 



MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 399 

one which preceded it. Various other circumstances of divers char- 
acter must be taken into the reckoning, and in particular the state 
of the animals. It is very necessary to have an eye to the state of 
the coat, to the spirit or liveliness of the animal, to the nature of the 
dejections, the size of the belly, the disposition of draught animals 
for their work, the quantity of milk given by milch-kine, &c. Nev- 
ertheless, and as a general proposition, it may be said that a station- 
ary condition, or a slight increase of weight, is almost always in 
favor of the course along with which it is gained or maintained, 
while any loss is almost always an indication of an inadequate al- 
lowance or of deficient nutritive qualities in the ration, taken in con- 
nection with the work required or the milk obtained. 

The experiments which I am about to detail were undertaken to 
determine the nutritive value of a variety of forages associated with 
the ordinary articles in keeping the horse. The great dearth of for- 
age that was felt in Alsace, in consequence of the extraordinary 
droughts of 1840, led us to feel the full importance of researches in 
this direction ; for then we were compelled to replace by potatoes a 
very large proportion of the hay usually consumed in the stable. 
And, indeed, by assuming the theoretical equivalent as the basis of 
this substitution, I found that I saved money by the course, at the 
same time that the health and strength of my draught cattle were 
maintained unimpaired. Still, as every question that bears upon the 
keep of the animals attached to a farm is too important to be left to 
the decision of theory alone, I thought it imperative on me to con- 
trol the inferences of chemical analysis by the results of experience. 

The best food for horses has long been admitted to be hay and 
oats in combination ; neither article alone would have the same 
happy effect that the two together produce. A ration of hay alone 
would be too bulky ; one of oats alone would not be bulky enough. 
But the horse is not particular in his food. Barley in southern 
countries replaces oats, and answers equally well. I have my- 
self kept horses and mules for long periods of time on maize and 
the tops of sugar canes exclusively ; and on the elevated table- 
lands of the Andes, and in the steppes of South America, the 
horses, though they do much hard work, are kept wholly on green 
meat. Much of course depends on the way in which the animal 
has been brought up. 

In the circumstances in which we are generally placed in this 
country, I do not imagine that there would be any actual advantage 
in replacing the ordinary food of our horses by roots and tubers ; I 
doubt even whether the substitution would have good effects. I 
know, indeed, that horses have been kept through the winter upon 
potatoes and mangel-wurzel ; but it is a different matter to feed an 
animal and keep him standing quiet in the stable without work, and 
to feed him at the same time that a certain quantity of labor is re- 
quired of him every day. A horse in full work would scarcely get 
through the bulky ration, which should consist of beet-root alone ; 
his meal-times are restricted ; if he has certain hours for his work, 
so has he certain hours for his breakfast, dinner, and supper also. 



400 MAINTENANCE OF ANI3IALS. 

This is one reason why carriers' horses and post-horses, horses, in 
a word, which have long and severe work to perform, receive the 
larger portion of their allowance in corn. The inconveniences of 
bulky rations are much less felt in the cow-house than in the stable ; 
not to speak of their particular organization, which actually enables 
them to take in a much larger quantity of food than the horse, the 
steer and the cow have always a longer time allowed them for their 
meals than are regularly given to the horse. 

The experience of nearly a whole year having satisfied me that a 
cart-horse may have half his ration in roots or tubers, I set out from 
this fact in the experiments which I instituted. 

EXPERIMENTS ON THE MAINTENANCE OF HORSES WITH MIXED FOOD. 

The usual allowance to a horse at Bechelbronn for the twenty- 
four hours consists of : 

Hay .... 22 lbs. 
Straw- ... 5^ 

Oats . . . . 7i 

With this ration the teams are kept in excellent condition. Two 
teams were selected as subjects of experiment, each consisting of 
four horses ; these I shall distinguish by the titles. Team No. 1 
and Team No. 2. Each remained under the care of the same ser- 
vant throughout. Team No. 1 was composed of: 

Braun, a mare, 7 years old. 

Schimmel, a horse, 7 " 

Hans, do., 16 • " 

Gaty, do., 8 " 

Team No. 2 was composed of : 

Old Fox, a mare, 16 years old, 

Braun, do., .5 " 

Nickel, do., 14 " 

Hengst, a horse, 5 " 

EXPERIMENT I. 

One half the allowance of hay was replaced by potatoes lightly 
steamed ; 280 of the tubers being assumed, according to theory, as 
equivalent to 100 of hay. The ration, therefore, consisted of: 

Hay .... 11 lbs. 

Straw . . . 5 J 

Oats . . . . 7i 

Potatoes ... 30 8-10 

The potatoes were broken down and mixed with chopped straw, 
and never put into the mangers until cold. 

From accidental circumstances, particularly bad weather during 
the course of the autumnal labors, the teams were exposed to very 
hard work, an event which of course throws uncertainty over thp 
results of this trial. After having been upon the course of food in- 



MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 401 

dicated for a few days, the teams were weighed once, and again 

after an interval of twenty-four hours : 

Team No. 1. No. 2. Both teams. Mean pef horse. 

First weighing 4617.8 4461 9079.4 1134.9 

Second weighing 4554.0 4334 8888.0 1111.0 

In 24 hours loss 63.8 127 391.4 23.9 

The loss experienced here authorized me to conclude, that the al- 
lowance under the circumstances was not sufficient. The 30.8 lbs. 
of steamed potatoes could not have adequately replaced the 11 lbs. 
of hay ; it would have been highly interesting to have ascertained 
how horses kept on the standard and usual allowance would have 
stood the same amount of fatigue. Unfortunately this comparison 
could not be made, all the horses in the stable having been put on 
the potato regimen at the same time. There is this much to be said 
for the particular course tried, however, that the animals did their 
work with great spirit, and continued in excellent health. 

EXPERIMENT U. 

INTRODUCTION OF JERUSALEM POTATOES INTO THE RATION. 

Jerusalem potatoes are held excellent food for the horse ; they are 
eaten greedily, and he thrives on them. In this second experiment, 
SOygths lbs. of Jerusalems cut into slices were substituted for 1 1 
lbs. of hay, the same theoretical equivalents being assumed for them 
as for the common potato. The ration now consisted of: 

Hay . , " . , . 11 lbs. 

Straw . . . 6i 

Oats . . . . 7i 

Jerusalem potatoes . 30.8 

Having been accustomed to this regimen for some days, the 
teams were weighed, and having gone on for eleven days they were 
weighed again : 

Team No. 1. No. 2. Both teams. Means per hor^c. 

First weighing 4556 3245 8901 1112.7 

Second weighing 4611 3412 8923 1113.6 

In 11 days gain 55 loss 33 gain 22 gain 0.9 

A result which leads to the conclusion, that the equivalent as- 
sumed for the Jerusalem potato was correct ; the animals had done 
their work, and gained, one with another, j^ths of a pound in 
weight. 

EXPERIMENT lU. 

RATION OF HAY AND POTATOES. 

Eleven pounds of hay, in the usual allowance, were replaced by 
30.8 lbs. of potatoes ; the whole of the oats and straw, by 15.4 lbs. 
of hay. These substitutions were made upon the supposition, that 
100 of hay was equivalent to 280 of potatoes, to 50 of oats, and to 
520 of straw. The ration, then, was composed as follows : 

Hay 26.6 lbs. 

Potatoes 30.8 " 

34* 



402 MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 

This was a ration which it was the more interesting to try, from 
the circumstance of Professor Liebig* having come to the conclu- 
sion, from certain theoretical views, that it must be impossible to 
keep horses in health and strength upon hay and potatoes exclusively. 
The experiment was continued for a fortnight : 

Team of No. 1. No. 2. Bolh teams. Mean weight per horse. 

First weighing 40'20 4312 8932 1116.5 

Second weighing 4075 4G97 9372 1171.5 

In 14 days. gain 55 385 440 55.0 

In one fortnight, consequently, the weight of eight horses had in- 
creased by an aggregate sum of 440 lbs., or 55 lbs. per head — an 
increase at the rate of, as nearly as possible, 3.9, say 4 lbs. per diem ; 
and allowing the greatest latitude for error, it seems that we cannot 
estimate the increase per head at less than 1.76, say I'l lbs. per 
diem. The condition of the horses was most satisfactory ; the de- 
jections were healthy in appearance ; the only inconvenience ob- 
served was, the considerable bulk of the allowance, and the addi- 
tional time which had to be given the teams to their meals. This 
inconvenience was particularly obvious in the case of the older 
horses. Besides the two experimental lots, other twelve horses 
were put upon the same regimen, and with the same good effects. 
The equivalents adopted in the composition of the ration, in this 
tUird experiment, may therefore be regarded with perfect confidence 
ai suitable. Experience, indeed, would rather lead us to conclude, 
that the nutritive power of the potato had been estimated at some- 
what too low a rate. 

EXPERIMENT IV. 

SUBSTITUTION OF OATS AND STRAW FOR A PORTION OP THE HAY. 

The ration here consisted of: 

Hay 11 lbs. 

Straw 11 " 

Oats 12.1 " 

The horses, having been two days on this diet, were weighed. 
The experiment was continued for eleven days : 

Team Nn. 1. No. 2. Both teams. Averaofe per horse. 

First weighing 4.5^4.8 4348.3 8933.1 1116.7 

Second weighing 4593.6 4.352.7 8946.3 1118.2 

In 11 days gain 8.8 4.4 13.2 1.5 

Under this regimen, conseqnently, the weight of the teams re- 
mained very nearly the same as it was before beginning the experi- 
ment; still there was something gained. 

In conducting this experiment, we had an opportunity of observing 
how important it is to habituate the animals to their new regimen 
before weigliing for tlic first time. Had this precaution been neg- 
lected, the result would have come out against the ration, for the 
animals were found, when first entered on it, to weigh together as 
many as 9372 lbs., and two days afterwards no more than 8933 lbs., 

* Agricultural chemistry. 



MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 403 

which would have indicated a loss of 449 lbs. ; the difference being 
due, however, in great part, or entirely, to the less bulky or weighty 
food employed. 

EXPERIMENT V. 

POTATOES SUBSTITUTED FOR A PORTION OF THE HAY. 

The ration made use of in the first experiment looks so well, in 
reference to economy of hay, and, indeed, answered so well under 
the peculiar circumstances in which it was tried, that I thought it 
would be advisable to try it again when the horses were doing ordi- 
nary work. The ration consisted of: 

Hay 11 ll>^. 

Straw 5.5 

Oats 7.23 " 

Steamed potatoes 30.8 " 

The first weighing took place after the horses had been over a 
week on the ration, and the experiment was continued for 63 days. 
In team No. 1, Braun, from indisposition, had been replaced by 
Rapp, a horse nine years old, and weighing 1157 lbs. : 

Team No. 1. No. 2. Both teams. Average weight per horse. 

First weighing 4425 4362 8848 IKMi.l 

Second weighing 4501 4428 8929 1116.2 

In 63 days gain 76 6G 81 lO.I 

In the course of two months, consequently, on a ration in which 
11 lbs. of hay were replaced by 30.8 lbs. of dressed potatoes, the 
weight of the horses may be said to have been more than main- 
tained. This experiment seems to show satisfactorily, that the 
equivalent of the potato cannot be far from the number 280. 

EXPERIMENT VI. 

JERUSALEM POTATO FOR A PORTION OF THE HAY. 

The horses were brought back to the same conditions as in the 
second experiment, 30.8 lbs. of Jerusalems being substituted for 
11 lbs. of hay. The team No. 2 was alone subjected to this experi- 
ment, being kept on it for 16 days, and first weighed after having 
had it for some time : 

First weighing No. 2. 4395 lbs. Average weight per horse 1098.9 

Second weighing.. " 4396.7 " " " 1099.1 

In 16 days gain 1.7 0.2 

This result confirms that which was elicited by the second ex- 
periment. 

EXPERIMENT VII. 

INTRODUCTION OF FIELD-BEET, OR MANGEL-WURZEL, INTO THE , 
RATION. 

Horses readily get accustomed to field-beet. The root is sliced, 
and mixed with chaff, (cut straw.) For 11 lbs. of hay, which I re- 
trenched, I allowed 44 lbs. of beet ; i. e. I took 400 as the equiva- 
lent nimiber of the root. The ration consisted as under : 



404 MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 

Hay n lbs. 

Straw 5.5 " 

Oats 7.2 " 

Beet 44.0 " 

A horse, after having been kept on this diet for some time, was 

weighed ; and the regimen having been continued for a fortnight, he 

was weighed again : 

First weighing 1014.0 lbs. 

Second weighing 1023.0 " 

In a fortnight. gain 9.4 

This horse was all the while doing rather hard but very regular 
work ; for eight hours every day he was in the shafts of a grinding 
null. He did not alter in condition ; the dejections were health)'. 

During the winter of 1841-2, our cows ate a considerable propor- 
tion of our beet; and, as a substitute for the 33 lbs. of meadow-hay, 
which is their usual allowance, we gave 72^ lbs. of beet. The ration 
then stood thus : 

riay 22 lbs. 

Beet 72.6 " 

Straw 4.4 " 

Upon this regimen, the weight of the inmates of one of our stables 
was : 

On the 29th .Tanuary 24615 lbs. 

On the 21st April 26488 

Increase due to births and to growth 1837 

It thus appears that, in foddering kine, the quantity of beet allow- 
ed with advantage may be large ; but it is also obvious, that the 
nutritive value of the root is not great. At Bechelbronn, at all 
events, we found it requisite to replace 9 or 10 of hay by 40 of root. 
Our beet, it is true, contains but 12 per cent, of dry matter ; in other 
places, where the proportion of dry substance to the water is larger, 
it is possible that a smaller proportion would be found to answer the 
end. 

EXPERIMENT VIII. 

INTRODUCTION OF THE SWEDISH TURNIP INTO THE RATION AND 
REPLACING A PORTION OF THE HAY. 

Swedish turnip, combined with some dry forage, answers excel- 
lently with the horse. Analysis, indicating 280 as the equivalent 
of this article, two horses were put upon the following ration, in 
which 1 1 lbs. of the usual allowance of hay were replaced by Swe- 
dish turnip : 

Hay II lbs. 

Straw 5.5 

Oats 7.2 

Swedes 30.8 

It was obvious before the lapse of but a few days, that the horses 

were falling oft' upon this regimen, that they were not fed ; and on 

weighing them, this plainly appeared : 

First weighing 2283.6 Aver, of each horse 1141.8 

Second weighing, 9 days afterwards 2178.0 " 1089.0 

Loss in 9 days 105.6 52.8 



MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 405 

The equivalent for the Swedish turnip adopted, had therefore been 
too high ; the allowance was not sufficient. This led me to analyze 
the article again ; and I discovered that the true equivalent of the 
sample with which I was operating, was at least 676, and not 280 
as I had presumed before. Indeed, in another experiment with the 
same pair of horses where the equivalent of Swedish turnip was as- 
sumed at 400, I found that though the animals kept up their weight 
at the point to vvhich it had fallen, they gained nothing ; whence it 
may be safely inferred that the No. 400 was still too low, and that 
the new equivalent 676 is nearer the truth. 
EXPERIMENT IX. 

INTRODUCTION OF CARROTS INTO THE RATION. 

Horses are extremely fond of carrots ; and there is no root per- 
haps, the nutritious qualities of which have been more vaunted or 
exaggerated. Yet, analysis appears to indicate that 350 of carrot 
are required to replace 100 of good meadow-hay. On one occasion, 
in the stable at Bechelbronn, when the potato in one of our rations 
was replaced by an equal weight of carrots, the effect was highly 
disadvantageous ; and even in following the theoretical equivalent 
of the carrot (350) we had still no reason to be perfectly satisfied. 
I now believe, in fact, that as many as 400 of carrots may be found 
requisite to replace 100 of good meadow-hay. 

The carrot crop of 1841 having been a failure, I had to limit my- 
self to observations made on a single horse, which was put upon a 
ration in which 11 lbs. of hay were replaced by 38.5 lbs. of carrots. 
The horse, habituated to this diet. 

Weighed 1025.2 lbs. 

A fortnight after 1014.2 

Loss in a fortnight 11.0 

Nevertheless he remained in good condition, so that the equivalent 
350 is probably not far from the truth. I ought to say, however, 
that the men think this number too low ; an opinion in which they 
would be borne out, could we but be certain that the loss of weight 
of the horse just indicated was not accidental. 
EXPERIMENT X. 

BOILED RYE AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR OATS. 

It has been stated, that rye boiled till the grain bursts may be 
used as a substitute for an equal bulk of oats in the keep of a horse. 
The experiment which I made on the point is very far from bearing 
out any thing of the kind. By preliminary trials I had ascertained 
that rye of good quality swells to twice its former bulk by boiling. 

The two horses that were made the subjects of experiment now, 
had been kept for some time on a ration formed of : 

Hay 2.2 lbs. 

Oats 5.5 =8.8 pints. 

For the oats, the same quantity by measure, 8.8 pints of boiled 
rye were substituted, containing 4.4 pints of raw grain, weighing 
4.15 lbs. On the Uth day it was deemed prudent to interrupt the 
experiment, of which the following are the results : 



406 MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 

First weighing : Both horses 2010 lbs. Average of each 1004^ 

Second " " 10^7 " 903.0 



Loss in 11 days 83 41.5 

In fact, with such a ration as this, in which water was made to 
replace solid corn, no otiier result could reasonably be expected. 
In continuing it, the healtii of the horses would very certainly have 
soon been seriously compromised. Tliere is no objection to rye in 
itself as an element in the food of a horse ; but then it must be sub- 
stituted in the quantity indicated by the table of equivalents, by 
adopting which, Mr. Dailly found that he could keep the post-horses 
of Paris in good heart, at a time when the diffierence between the 
price of oats and rye made it advantageous to substitute the latter 
for the former. The experiments of Mr. Dailly on the subject were 
so decisive and so ably conducted, that I felt myself relieved from 
the necessity of inquiring further into it myself. 

From these experiments, the particulars of which have now been 
given, it may be concluded that the nutritive equivalents of the po- 
tato, beet, Jerusalem potato, and carrot, as they come out upon ana- 
lysis, or as they are inferred from the amount of azote they contain, 
may be adopted without detriment to the health of horses. If they 
err at all, it is that they assign equivalents somewhat too high, 
which is the same as saying that their actual nutritive power is 
rather less than these numbers give it ; so that a portion of the hay 
of the standard ration being substituted for its equivalent of tuber or 
root, the diet will be improved. 

Thus, 100 of good meadow-hay may be taken, as ascertained by 
experiment, to be equivalent to : 

2.-*() potatoes — by analvsis, equal to 3Io 

'->H0 Jorusalcms ' 311 

•100 b(<t 548 

■100 Swede (too litUe) 076 

400 carrot 382 

In the following table of nutritive equivalents, to the numbers as- 
signed by the theory, I have added those of the whole which I find 
in the entire series of observations that have come to my knowledge. 
I have also given the standard quantity of water, and the quantity of 
azote, contained in each species of ibod. When the theoretical 
equivalents do not diller too widely from those supplied by direct 
observation, I believe that they ought to be preferred. The details 
of mj' experiments, and the precautions needful in entering on and 
carrying them through, must have satisfied every one of the difficul- 
ties attending their conduct ; yet all allow how little these have been 
attentively contemplated, and what slender measures of precaution 
against error have been taken. Our equivalent for field-beet is 400, 
a number come to by introducing 44 lbs. of the root into the ration, 
in lieu of 11 lbs. of hay; had we introduced 50 lbs., the equivalent 
number would have come out 500 ; and it is questionable whether 
the final result would have been affected by this substitution. In 
my opinion, direct observation or experiment is indispensable, but 
mainly, solely as a means of checking within rather wide limits the 
results of chemical analysis. 



MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 



407 






s?s 5 = 



X P-HS 

c en 5^ 

I- ti|- 

5 °3 



^S^« = to 



3 iZ. 



•r • 






Standard water 
per cent. 



K> N- to — J-. -- k-- W ^ to to C 

frOi3:A»>efc— 1— 100--.107— 'tot 

o & o CO o o CO o a. a-. ;d t 



3 C" w '-- *k— cri cc ^:: CO CO Cji CO *. ii. u» CO * '--n cr. Ifa. a. en co 



Azote per cent. 






lip p^'-'^>-- p p fc-ip pp c 

n o wi *» >— 00 00 y: cj' o tc J 



o.t..A..tcj:i:j"Co*-'C5COw-t 

CH-C3-^*fcttfcOCOC'OCft 



Azdte per cent. 

in the article 

not dried. 



>u.oDtj :c 



SSi 



■-it^<S-^.t'-C OJ'^'^C 






Theory. 



gES_gS 



olSS 



Block. 



Petri. 



Meyer. 



iES- 



sss? 



000c 



ills 



Thaer. 



Pabst. 



Rieder. 






S8' 



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ggg; 



Gemerhausen. 



Dombasle. 



Midleton. 



Andre. 
Boussingault. 



408 



MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 



Wheat husks or ch 
Rice (Piedmont) 
Gold of pleasure se 
Ditto, cake . 
Linseed cuke . 
Cal/.a ditto 
Madia ditto . 
Hemp ditto 
Poppy ditto 
Nut ditto 
Beech mast ditto 
Arachis (H) ditto 
D.'y, acorns 
Refuse of the wine 


O.its (18.38) .. 
Ditto (1836) . 
Jlltto (Parisian) 
Rye (1836) . 
Ditto (1838) . 
Wheat (1836, Alsa 
Ditto (1838) 
Ditto Irom highly r 

Recent bran . 


rws: 


Ditto atler keeping 
Cider apple pulp dr 
Beet.root magma 1 
Vetches in seed 
Field beans 
White neius (dry) 
White haricots 
Lentils . 
New maize . 


C5S 


i 


sd (Madil 
press, air 


in the pit 
led ill the air 
rom the sugar mill 

ce) ' . . '. ', 
nanured soil . 

aff 


•dried . 


65.9 
79.4 
76.8 
6.4 
70.0 
14.6 
7.9 
8.6 
5.0 
9.0 
18.0 
12.5 
13.2 
13.0 
13.0 
20.8 
12.4 
14.0 
11.5 
11.5 
10.5 
14.5 
16.6 
12.1 
37.1 
13.8 
7.6 
13.4 
8.0 
11.2 
13.4 
10.5 
6.5 
5.0 
6.8 
6.0 
6.2 
6.6 


Standard water 
per cent. 


1.50 
1.80 
1.18 
0.63 

5! 13 
5.50 
4.20 
4.30 
4.40 
2.00 
2.40 
2.02 
2.46 
2.20 
2,20 
2.22 
1.93 
1.70 
2.27 
2.33 
2.30 
3.18 
2.60 
2.18 
2.77 
0.94 
1.39 
4.00 
5.70 
6.00 
5. .50 
5.93 
4.78 
5.70 
5.59 
3.53 
8.89 

3.31 


Azote per cent. 


0.36 
0.37 
0.30 
0.59 
0.38 
4.37 
5.11 
3.84 
458 
4.00 
1.64 
2.10 
1.76 
2.14 
1.90 
1.74 
1,92 
1.70 
1.50 
2.00 
2.09 
2.00 
2.65 
2.80 
1.36 
2.30 
0.85 
1.20 
3.67 
5.06 
5.20 
4.92 
5.51 
4.21 
5.36 
5.24 
3.31 
8,33 
0.80 
1.71 


Azote per cent. 

in the article 

not dried. 


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Theory. 


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S££2 




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Rieder. 














































Gemerhausen. 












































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o 


Crud. 










; ;s 




































Weber. 




































,g 








•3 


Dombasle. 
























ffi 


















■■^ 


Krantz. 












































■M 


Schwartz. 


























g; 






















Schnee. 
















































Midleton. 












































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Murre. 






























ig 












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Andr6. 






























S 






s: ; 






:g 


Boussineault. 



MAINTENANCE OF ANIMALS. 409 

To complete the preceding ample table, I shall still add the equiv- 
alents of a few articles of forage that have not yet been examined 
chemically. 

100 of meadow-hay are replaced by : 

From 85 to 90 of sainfoin hay, according to Petri and Meyer. 

By 90 of spurry hay " Petri. 

325 to .500 of green spurry " Pabst and Flottow 

42 to 50 of chestnuts " Block and Petri. 

By 50 of Indian chestnuts " Petri. 

CiJ of turnsole seeds " Petri. 

109 of rye-bran " Block. 

In the list of substances there are some which are used almost 
exclusively for the food of man, and I have thought it not uninter- 
esting to contrast these different articles with reference particularly 
to the quantity of azote they contain. I have composed the follow- 
ing table or list of equivalents on this basis; having assumed wheat- 
en flour as the standard and called it 100. As all herbs, roots, 
leaves, &c., may be pulverized after drying, I have spoken of these 
articles dry under the name of meal. 

Wheat flour (good quality)..- 100 White-heart cabbage 810 

Wheat 107 Cabbage meal 83 

Barley-meal 119 Potatoes 613 

Barley 130 Potato meal 126 

Rye Ill Carrots 757 

Buckwheat 108 Carrot meal 95 

Maize 138 Turnips 1335 

Yellow peas l>7 Mealy bananas (Ficus Indica) 700 

Horse-beans 44 Manihot (casava plant) 700 

White French beans 56 Name ? (discorea sativa) 300 

Rice 171 Apio ■? (arracacha) 1050 

Lentils • 57 

Judging from the equivalents, leguminous vegetables must be pos- 
sessed of a much higher nutritive value than wheat ; and it is known, 
indeed, that haricots, peas, and beans, form in some sort substitutes 
for animal food. The difference indicated is so great, however, that 
it may surprise those who have never thought of the subject that 
engages us. In a general way we are all perhaps disposed to re- 
gard the articles that enter habitually into our food as highly nutri- 
tious. The fact, however, is, that tubers, roots, and even the seeds 
of the cereal grasses are but very moderately nutritious. If we see 
herbivorous animals getting fat upon such things, it is only because 
their organization enables them to consume them in large quantities. 
I doubt very much whether a man doing hard work could support 
himself on bread exclusively. I am aware that countries are quoted 
where the potato and where rice form the sole articles of food of 
the inhabitants ; but I believe also that these instances are incom- 
plete. In Alsace, for example, the peasantry always associate their 
potato diet with a large quantity of sour or curdled milk ; in Ireland 
with buttermilk. The Indians of the Upper Andes do not by any 
means live on potatoes alone, as some travellers have said they do ; 
at Quito, the daily food of the inhabitants is lorco, a compound of 
potatoes, and a large quantity of cheese. Rice is often cited as one 
of the most nourishing articles of diet ; I am satisfied, however, af- 
ter having lived long in countries where rice is largely consumed, 

35 



410 INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF FOOD. 

that it is any thing but a substantial, or, for its bulk, nutritions arti- 
cle of sustenance. This is an important question, inasmuch as in 
some departments of the public service rice is sometimes served 
out as a substitute for other articles of diet. In the French navy, 
for example, 60 grammes, or about 20 dwts. of rice may be substi- 
tuted for 60 dwts. of split peas or haricots ; but I cannot hold such 
a substitution to be either fair or reasonable. At a period when I 
had myself the charge of the rations for a detachment of men, I 
found that the experience of the country where I was, assigned 3 
lbs. of rice as the equivalent of 1 lb. of haricot beans; and analysis 
confirms this practical conclusion. 

Haricots, in fact, contain about 0.046 of azote ; rice no more than 
0.014. And if the nutritious properties be really in proportion to 
the amount of azote, it is obvious that 3^ of rice will be required in 
lieu of 1 of the leguminous seed. 

We hear it constantly repeated that rice is the sole nutriinent of 
the nations of the whole of India. But the fact would appear not 
to be precisely so ; and I may here quote M. Lequerri, who, during 
a long residence in India, paid particular attention to the manners 
and customs of the inhabitants of Pondicherri. " The food," says 
M. L., " is almost entirely vegetable, and rice is the staple ; the infe- 
rior castes only ever eat meat. But all eat kari, an article prepared 
with meat, fish, or vegetables, which is mixed with the rice boiled 
in very little water. It is requisite to have seen the Indians at their 
meals to have any idea of the enormous quantity of rice they will 
put into their stomachs. No European could cram so much at a 
time ; and they very commonly allow that rice alone will not nour- 
ish them. They very generally still eat a quantity of bread."* 

^ II. OF THE INORGANIC CONSTITUENTS OF FOOD. 

We discover in the bodies of animals the several mineral sub- 
stances, the existence of which we have ascertained in vegetables. 
The bones, as we have seen, contain a large quantity of phosphate 
of lime ; it is requisite therefore that the elements of this salt, phos- 
phoric acid and lime, should form part of the ration or diet-roll ; this 
is a point upon which all physiologists are agreed ; but the point 
upon which there is nothing like uniformity yet attained has refer- 
ence to the precise quantity of mineral matter which must enter into 
the constitution of the food. The analyses of ashes which I have given 
show that if vegetable aliments all contain nearly the same inorganic 
principles, they still contain them in very different proportions : thus 
potatoes, wheat, oats, and beans, contain much less lime than clover, 
straw, and peas. The phosphoric and sulphuric acids and the alka- 
lies do not vary less ; so that we are led to ask whether a ration 
compounded of such and such an article, or of such and such arti- 
cles, will furnish the animals to which it is supplied with the neces- 

* The Irish pea8antr>% who live so much on potatoes, have buttermilk with them 
at least, often salt herring; and a laboring man, it is said, will consume 12 or 14 lbs. 
per diem !— Emo. Ed. 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF FOOD. 411 

sary dose of inorganic principles, which must be assimilated daily, 
and which is quite indispensable to maintain them in health and 
vigor. 

It is easy to arrive at a knowledge of the mineral principles which 
are necessary as elements of the diet, by ascertaining their quantity 
in the ration, which long experience has shown to be sufficient. Yet 
as there is reason to believe that in many cases mineral substances 
are present in excess, I have thought that it might be useful to de- 
termine by means of analysis the nature and the proportion of the 
inorganic elements which are actually assimilated by an individual, 
in order to have a minimum which might serve as a basis for any 
reasonings or inferences on the subject. My experiments were per- 
formed in two opposite circumstances in which I regard assimilation 
as most rapid and most complete : videlicit, a calf in full growth, 
and a milch-cow in calf. 

The calf was six months old, and weighed 369 lbs. Some days 

before being made the subject of experiment it was fed with hay. 

During the two days when it had this fodder ad libitum, it ate 19 lbs. 

In the course of the 1st day the calf passed 21.49 lbs. of excrements. 
2d day " 20.39 

41.83 

Which, dried, was reduced to 7.41 lbs. 

In the course of the two days 5.584 lbs. of urine were collected, 
which, evaporated, yielded 2933.2 grains of extract, the animal hav- 
ing in the same interval drunk 45.7 pints of water. 

Analysis discovered in 100 : 

Of the hay Azote 1.6 Ashes 7.6 

Of the dr>' excrements " 2.1 " 12.7 

Of the urinous extract "4.0 " 40.0 

Now if we inquire from these data in regard to the quantity of 
azote and of mineral matters which were assumed with the food in 
the course of two days, we have : 

hair-ilrachms. half-drachms. 

In the food, discarding fractions, Azote 69 Mineral substances 328 
In the excrements " " 50.5 " 214 

In the urine " "3-8 " 38 

Together 54.3 252 

Therefore, azote fixed or exhaled in 2 days 14-7 half-drachms. 
Mineral substances fixed in 2 days 76 " 

The composition of the ashes obtained from the hay and from the 
excrements, shows us approximatively both the quantity and the 
nature of the several inorganic substances which had been assimi- 
lated. The composition of these ashes is as follows : 

Oflhehay. Of the excrements. Oftheuriae. 

(Carbonic 9.0 2.0 17.3 

Acids < Phosphoric 5.3 5.1 0.2 

(Sulphuric 2.4 2.3 7.0 

Chlorine 2.3 1.9 9.9 

Lime 20.4 16.0 0.9 

Magnesia 6.0 6.5 6.0 

Potash and soda 17.3 12.5 57.3 

Oxide of iron, alumina 1.5 1.0 " 

Silesia 33.7 51.0 1.2 

Loss 2.1 1.7 

looA 100.0 loao 



412 INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF FOOD. 

If the hay consumed contained 328 half-drachms of ash or mineral 
matter, the excrements and urine 252 half-drachms of the same 
matters ; tlie diflerencc between the two sums, 7G half-drachms,* 
is the quantity of mineral matter fixed in the course of two days, of 
which 200.6 grains were phosphoric acid, and 494.0 grains were 
lime. This quantity of lime, however, is more than four times as 
much as is necessary to constitute a subphosphate of lime such as 
exists in the bones. It is true, indeed, that there is always a quan- 
tity of carbonate of lime associated with the subphosphate in bones; 
10 of carbonate for 38 of phosphate, according to Fourcroy and 
Vauquelin, in those of the ox. JStill the quantity of lime assimilated 
was vastly more than it ought to have been, had it only gone to assist 
in tiie formation of bone. If there was no error in the observations, 
it is probable that the base in question enters into the constitution of 
the salts with organic acids which are encountered in all parts of 
the animal body. 

By a series of v^-eighings, I ascertained that my calf, fed simply 
upon hay, increased every day by a quantity equal to 9725.9 grains 
troy, in which were included 858.35 grains of mineral substances, 
the calcareous phosphate and carbonate of the bones in this quan- 
tity being represented by 262.4 grains, or nearly 3 per cent, of the 
entire weight acquired in the course of twenty-four hours- 

In the experiment with the milch-cow in calf, I limited my inqui- 
ries to the phosphoric acid and the lime taken in and given out. 
The animal, lour years old, was 27^ months gone with calf, and 
weighed 1452.6 lbs. She had the same allowance during the expe 
riment as she had had for several days before, and which for twenty 
four hours consisted of — 

Iliiy 1G..5 lbs. 

Cut wheat-straw 9.9 

Beet 59.4 

The experiment was continued for four days, during which the 
excrements, the urine, and the milk, were carefully collected and 
weighed, and the ashes, both of the food consumed and of the pro- 
ducts rendered, were determined by chemical analysis. Suffice it to 
say, that, representing the quantity of mineral matters assumed into 
the body in the course of the cxi)eriment by 819.9 half-draehnis, the 
quantity voided amounted to no more than 556 half-drachms. In the 
quantity assumed, there were 100.2 half-drachms of phosphoric acid, 
and 203.8 half-drachms of lime ; in the quantity voided, there were 
but 68.2 half-drachms of phosphoric acid, and 116.8 half-drachms 
of lime : this is at the rate of about 8 half-drachms of phosphoric 
acid, and 22 half-drachms of lime assimilated in the course of twenty- 
four hours. Here, as in the case of the calf, the quantity of lime 
assimilated is greatly superior to what it ought to be, in order, by 
combining with the phosphoric acid, to constitute the phosphate of 
lime of the bones. 

From these inquiries into the nutrition of a calf and of a cow in 

* The cvact quantity is 2392.8 grains troy.— Eno. Ed. 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF FOOD. 413 

calf, it follows that there is a portion of the mineral substance taken 
in with the food, which remains definitively fixed to concur in the 
growth or in the evolution of the individual. In an adult animal it 
is to be presumed that no such definitive fixation of inorganic prin- 
ciples takes place, or that it is much less considerable ; that in the 
dejections and several secretions ought to be found the whole of the 
phosphoric acid, of the lime, &c., taken in with the food. And this 
presumption is confirmed by experience ; for on instituting an inquiry 
into the matter upon a horse, it was found that the mineral matters 
assumed were almost exactly balanced by those discharged. Never- 
theless, and granting this to be quite true, which it is, it would be a 
grave mistake to suppose that an adult animal could go on for even 
a very short period of time upon food that contained no mineral 
matter. Precisely as in the case of organic matter, it appears that 
a portion of inorganic matter is also fixed in the living frame, where 
for a time it forms an integral element in the wonderful structure ; 
and a supply of the latter kind is undoubtedly no less necessary than 
is the supply of the former description recognised by all the world. 
Were there an inadequate quantity of phosphoric acid, of lime, &c., 
in the food, no question but that the body would speedily feel the 
effects of the deficiency, and that disease and death would by and by 
put an end to life. iSo much, indeed, seems demonstrated by the 
very interesting experiments of M. Chossat, in which he kept 
granivorous animals upon a diet rich in azotized principles and in 
starch, but deficient in lime. From some previous inquiries, M. 
Chossat had observed that pigeons even require to add a certain 
proportion of lime to their ordinary food, the quantity naturally con- 
tained in which does not suffice them. Wheat, as we have seen, 
though it contains a large proportion of phosphate of magnesia, con- 
tains very little phosphate of lime ; and pigeons put on this grain, 
though they do perfectly well at first, and even get fat, begin by and 
by to fall off. In from two to three months, the birds appeared to 
suffer from constant thirst ; they drank frequently ; the foeces be- 
came soft and liquid, and the flesh wasted, and in from eight to ten 
months the creatures died under the effects of a diarrhoea, which 
M. Chossat attributed to deficiency of the calcareous eleinent in the 
food. And it is neither uninteresting nor unimportant to observe, 
that the same thing occasionally occurs in the human subject during 
the period when the process of ossification is usually most active. 
But one of the most remarkable features of M. Chossat's experi- 
ments was observed in the .state of the bones of the pigeons ; they 
became so thin and weak that they broke during the life of the birds 
with the slightest force.* The conclusion from this fact is obvious. 
Supplies of all the elements of all the parts of the body are indispen- 
sable to the maintenance of health, to the continuance of life. 

A pigeon will eat about 463.140 grains of wheat per diem, con- 
taining 9.725 grains of ash, in which analysis discovers 4.569 grains 
of phosphoric acid, and 0.277 of a grain of lime. But this small 

* Chossat, in Comptes Rendus, t. xiv., p. 451. 
35* 



414 INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF FOOD. 

quantity of lime is incompetent to maintain the bones in their stan- 
(iard condition. I have thoufjht it of moment to insist upon these 
facts, because I see that they may sometimes come into play in practi- 
cal rural economy. No breeder or feeder ought to be ignorant of 
the influence of mineral substances on nutrition. It is not only indis- 
pensable that the allowance of an animal in full growth be sufficient 
to support, and even to add to the soft textures ; it must further con- 
tain the elements requisite for the nutrition of the osseous system : 
and it is not impossible but that, in managing the feeding of young 
cattle or young horses in such a way as to reduce to a minimum, or 
to give in excess, certain of the inorganic elements of the food, we 
may succeed in impressing one character or another upon a race. 
It is even possible that the empirical rules which are acted upon 
with a view to increase or diminish the quantity of bone, the weight 
of flesh or of fat, &c., are all connected with various proportions 
of phosphoric acid, of lime, magnesia, &c., in the food. It will 
probably be discovered, some day, that Bake well's art is to be ex- 
plained through the composition of the ashes of the food. 

Wheat is not the only alimentary matter that contains an insuf- 
ficient quantity of lime ; maize or Indian corn contains still less : 
and if that which is grown in the tropics contains as little as that 
which is produced in Europe, it would be difficult to explain how 
the grain should answer so well as it unquestionably does for food.* 
It is true that it is seldom or never consumed alone and without 
addition ; and in South America, where the animals have it largely, 
I have observed that they frequently eat earth. The habit which 
certain tribes of the natives have of eating earth, too, which has 
been particularly remarked upon by travellers and missionaries as an 
instance of depravation of taste, presents itself to me in quite another 
light, since I became acquainted with the composition of the ashes 
of the ordinary article of diet in the countries where it occurs. f 

The calcareous and other salts necessary to nutrition, how- 
ever, are not derived from the food exclusively ; the water that is 
generally consumed contains a quantity which is by no means to be 
neglected. A horse or a cow, for instance, which drinks from 15 
to 45 quarts of water per diem, will even, if the water be as pure as 
that of the Artesian well of Grenelle, take in from 35 to 108 grains 
of saline matter in which carbonate of lime predominates ; water that 
is less free from saline impregnation would of course introduce a 
much larger proportion ; some waters in the quantities above speci- 
fied will contain from 138 to upwards of 400 grains of saline matter, 
one half of which may be carbonate of lime. And I am here speak- 
ing of clear or filtered water ; that which is muddy or turbid con- 
tains a still larger quantity of earthy matter in suspension than in 
solution. In an experiment made for the purpose of getting at the 
amount of earthy matter taken by a milch-cow from the watering- 

* An ash of maize, analyzeil in my lalioralnry by M. LctcUicr, contuincil but 1.3 per 
cent. <if linio to .50.1 of phosphoric acid an<l 17.0 of magnesia. 

t I several times saw children chastised in Indian villages who had been caught 
eating earth. 



INORGANIC ELEMENTS OF FOOD. 



415 



trough in the course of the day, I found that it amounted to about 
770 grains troy. 

Notwithstanding these facts, it is still doubtful whether the lime 
contained in ordinary well-water would prove sufficient to supply a 
growing animal with the material requisite to the formation of its 
bones ; in adults, indeed, changes in the elements of the bones ap- 
pear to proceed so slowly that a very small quantity of calcareous 
matter probably suffices to repair losses ; but it is otherwise with 
young and growing animals. I have shown that a calf six months 
old receives with its forage a quantity of phosphoric acid which cor- 
responds to 555.7 grains of phosphate of lime. A calf a few weeks 
old, when it has 17 or 18 pints of milk per diem, receives 802.7 
grains of mineral substances, into which subphosphate of lime or 
bone earth enters in the proportion ot 370.5 grains. It would be in- 
teresting to ascertain what quantities of these substances were as- 
similated by so young an animal, and at a period when the growth 
is so rapid that the increase from day to day sometimes exceeds 2 
pounds. 

The importance of the inorganic principles of the food once re- 
cognised, it concerns us to take note of their nature and quantity in 
the ratio we allow to our domestic animals. It is in fact this con- 
sideration which has led me to determine the quantities of phospho- 
ric acid and lime contained in the various articles of food the ashes 
of which have been analyzed. With these data the proportion of 
bone earth contained in a given ration is forthwith perceived. 

One thousand parts of the forage gathered at Bechelbronn in its 
ordinary state contained : 



Forage. 



Hay 

Potatoes 

Beet 

Turnip 

Jerusalem Potato 

Wheat 

Maize 

Oats 

Wheat-straw — 

Oat-straw 

Clover-hay 

Peas 

Haricots 

Beans 



Mineral 
Substances. 


Azute. 


Phosrho- 
nc acid. 


Lime. 


Bone 
earth. 


62.33 


11.50 


3.37 


10.04 


696 


9.64 


3.70 


1.09 


0.17 


0.33 


7.70 


2.10 


0.46 


0.54 


0.95 


5.70 


1.30 


035 


0.62 


0.72 


12.47 


3.75 


1.35 


29 


0.56 


20.51 


20.50 


9.64 


0.60 


1.16 


11.00 


16.40 


5.51 


0.14 


0.27 


31.74 


17.87 


4.73 


1.17 


2.27 


51.90 


3.00 


1.61 


4.41 


3.32 


35.70 


3.00 


1.07 


2.97 


221 


73.50 


21.00 


4.63 


18.08 


9.85 


30.00 


38.40 


9.03 


3.03 


5.83 


35.00 


45.80 


9.38 


2.03 


5.94 


30.00 


51.10 


10.26 


1.53 


9.27 



We seem here to observe a certain relation between the proportion 
of azote and that of the phosphoric acid contained in the food ; the 
most highly azotized are also those that generally contain the largest 
quantity of the acid, a circumstance which seems to indicate that in 
the vegetable kingdom the phosphates are connected more especially 
with the azotized principles, and that they accompany them in pass- 
ing into the textures of animals. With the assistance of the above 
table it is easy to ascertain the quantity of phosphate of lime which 



416 



FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 



enters into a given ration. Let us take that given to the horses in 
experiment 3d, in which the half of the hay was replaced by pota- 
toes, one of the articles that contains the smallest proportion of lime, 
and we find in the 

26.6 lbs. of Iiiiy 632.9 grs. phosphoric acid and 1867.!) grs. of lime. 
30.8 lbs. iKJtatoes 387.7 " 37.0 



numbers which correspond with 1798.5 grains of bone earth, and 
978.7 grains of uncombined lime. 

In his usual allowance a work-horse at Bechelbronn receives : 

Hay 22 lbs. containing 524.8 grs. phosphoric acid, and 1543.8 grs. of lime. 
Straw 5.5 " 60.7 

Oats 7.2 " 230.2 



In other words, 1735 grains of bone earth, and 864 grains of free 
lime. 

I have found that very young foals, growing rapidly, and weigh- 
ing about 374 lbs., consume per diem : 

~' — Hay. .. .19.8 lbs. containing of phosphoric acid 463 grs. : lime 1389 grs. 
Oats ... 7.2 " " 231 " 58.6 

which represent 95 of bone earth or subphosphate of lime. As a 
consequence of the relation which appears to exist between the 
azote and phosphoric acid of an article of sustenance, it comes to 
pass that like nutritive equivalents also indicate like proportions of 
phosphoric acid ; so that by introducing a suitable quantity of hay or 
clover, articles that abound in lime, into the ration, we are always 
certain of having food favorable to the development of the osseous 
system, whatever the nature and quality of the other articles that 
enter into the constitution of the allowance. 

The relation of the phosphoric acid to the azote approaches the 
ratio of 3 to 10, in the more ordinary articles of forage ; but the 
same relation is no longer apparent in the cereals and leguminous 
vegetables ; in grain and in peas, beans. Sec, the phosphoric acid 
amounts to about a fourth of the azote contained. Thus we have : 



Tlieoreticol 
equivalent. 

Hay 100 

Potatoes 320 

Beet 548 

Turnip 885 

Jerusalems 273 

Dry clover 75 

Wheat-straw. . .235 



Phosphoric 
acij in ihc 
equivalent. 

0.34 

0.35 

0.28 

0.31 

0.37 

0.34 

0.37 



e«iuivalei 

0:\t-str.iw 380 

Oat-s 68 

Maize 70 

Wheat 43 

Peas 25 

Haricots 27 

Beans 23 



Phosphoric 
acid 111 Ihe 
equivalent. 

0.40 

0.32 

0.38 

0.41 

0.23 

0.25 

0.24 



^ III. 



OF THE FATTY CONSTITUENTS OF FORAGE : CONSIDERATIONS ON 
FATTE.MNCi. 



When fat was observed accumulating in the tissues of the animal 
body, and it was unknown that the presence of fatty matters in 
plants is what may be termed a general fact, men naturally con- 
ceived that the fat was produced from the food in the act of diges- 



FATTY ELE3IENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTF.NING. 417 

tion, that it was composed in the animal body much in tho same way 
as it is formed in the seed and leaf of the living vegetable. 

The inquiries which I am about to present, however, all tend to 
make us conclude that fatty substances are only produced in vege- 
tables, and that they pass ready formed into the bodies of animals, 
where they may either undergo combustion immediately, so as to 
evolve the heat which the animal requires, or be stored up in the 
tissues in order to serve as a magazine of combustible matter. 

This latter view appears the most simple ; but before discussing 
the experiments which bear it out, it seems necessary to pass in 
brief review the notions that have been entertained at different times 
on the formation of fat. When the great burying-place of the In- 
nocents was emptied, for example, it was commonly imagined that 
one of the effects of the putrefactive process was to convert the 
flesh, the brain, the viscera, &c., into fat — adipocire, as it was 
called ; it was not, indeed, till after the researches of M. Chevreul 
had been undertaken, and that it was discovered adipocire contained 
the same acids as human fat, which had, in fact, only been partially 
saponified by ammonia, — until the inquiries of M. Gay-Lussac were 
made public — that it was acknowledged that muscular flesh or fibrine 
subjected to putrefaction leaves no larger a quantity of fat than can 
be obtained from it by proper solvents before it has undergone any 
change : the effect of putrefaction is to destroy the fibrine, and so to 
expose the fatty substance which it contained. 

It may therefore be said, that all these fortuitous opinions upon 
the supposed formation of fat by chemical processes, have vanished 
as they have been successively subjected to careful examination. 

Let us now turn to the inferences come to by physiology. The 
Dodies of carnivorous animals are often loaded with fat ; and none 
can be detected in any of their excretions. It is therefore in these 
animals that it must be most easy to ascertain the source or origin, 
and mode of disappearance of fatty matter. 

When the progress of digestion is v>.'atched in a dog, it is soon 
discovered that the chyle is far from being a fluid having uniformly 
the same characters and qualities. That which is produced under 
the influence of a vegetable diet, abounding in the starchy principle 
and in sugar, or after a meal of perfectly lean meat, is always and 
alike poor in molecules or globules. The chyle is then nearly trans- 
parent, extremely serous, and yields very little fat when washed with 
ether. But if the animal have a meal of fat food, the chyle that re- 
sults from it is opaque like cream, very rich in particle*, and, digest- 
ed with ether, yields a large quantity of fatty or oily matter to that 
solvent. 

These facts, observed by M. Magendie, and confirmed with more 
ample details by Messrs. Sandras and Bouchardat, show that the 
fatty principles of our food minutely subdivided or made into an 
emulsion by the act of digestion, pass without undergoing any es- 
sential change into the chyle, and from that into the blood, whither 
they can in fact be followed, and in which they can be shown to 
remain for a longer or a shorter time unaltered, at the disposal of 



418 FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 

the economy, as it were. Such observations have naturally led 
physiologists to conclude that the fatty principles of the food were 
the principal, if not the only sources whence animals derive the fat 
which is met with stored up in their tissues, or which appears in the 
butter of their milk. And this view, so long as the carnivorous 
tribes alone are considered, has not a single feature which makes it 
objectionable. But when we would extend it to the herbivorous 
tribes, two difficulties meet us on the threshold of the inquiry. 

1st. Do vegetables actually contain such a quantity of fatty matter 
in their structure as will explain the fattening of cattle and the for- 
mation of milk 1 

2d. Is it not more simple to suppose fat and butter the product of 
certain transformations undergone by starch and sugar in the animal 
economy 1 

It appears at first sight most opposite to nature to suppose that the 
feeding ox finds the whole of the fat he lays on ready formed in the 
food he eats ; it is only, in fact, after having made repeated analyses 
of plants, and discovered fatty matters almost everywhere, and in 
quantities generally superior to any that had been suspected in the 
composition of plants, that the idea begins to acquire likelihood ; 
finally, the chemist becomes convinced that it is so when he finds a 
regular association of neutral azotized substances and latty principles 
in all the articles usually employed as food for cattle, — in the grass- 
es and cereals, in the leaves and stems and seeds of plants. 

Fatty substances appear to be principally formed in the leaves, 
where they frequently show themselves under the form and with 
the properties of wax. Taken into the bodies of animals, mingled 
with the blood, and exposed to the influence of the oxygen of the 
inspired air, they will undergo an incipient oxidation, whence will 
result the stearic or oleic acid that is found as a constituent of suet. 
By undergoing a second elaboration in the bodies of the carnivora, 
the same fatty substances, oxiilated anew, would produce the mar- 
garic acid which characterizes their fat. These divers principles, 
by a still further degree of oxidation, would give rise to the fat vola- 
tile acids which make their appearance in the blood and in the per- 
spiration. Fiu:illy, did they sutTer complete oxidation, i. e. combus- 
tion, they would be changed into carbonic acid and water, and be in 
this shape eliminated from the economy. 

Among the various properties possessed by fatty substances, there 
is one which may play an important part in the phenomena of fatten- 
ing ; this is the solvent power which they severally possess in re- 
gard to one another ; the j)roperly of mixing in all imaginable pro- 
portions, still preserving the general features which severally dis- 
tinguish them. In the stomach, in the intestines, in the chyle, and 
in the blood, fatty substances of various kinds may form homoge- 
neous matters by their intimate admixture, and become divided into 
globules of complex composition, but everywhere the same. 

Another property of fatty matters of every kind, which deserves 
particular attention, is that of insolubility in water. We find, in 
fact, that when an animal eats a soluble substance, that in general it 



FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 419 

is consumed by a true process of combustion, which converts its 
carbon into carbonic acid, and its hydrogen into water ; or otherwise, 
it is simply eliminated without change in the urine. 

Fatty matters may, indeed, disappear under the first form ; but 
so long as they escape remarkable modification, it is certain that 
they do not pass off by the urine, and that the quantity eliminated 
by the perspiration is insignificant. Their insolubility, therefore, 
retains them in the economy once they have entered the blood or 
the tissues ; and it is in virtue of this quality that they constitute a 
kind of magazine of combustible matter in the animal body. This 
is the principal reason wherefore individuals supplied with food in 
excess get fat, and that those insufficiently fed fall lean ; the fatty 
matter being deposited in the interstices of the tissues in the former 
case, being taken up from them and burned in the second. 

This explanation is attractively simple ; but in our attachment to 
it we must not forget that other explanations have also been given ; 
and in particular it must be contrasted with a view which has been 
formed upon certain inquiries undertaken by M. Dumas. It is 
known, for instance, that sugar may be regarded as a compound of 
carbonic acid, water, and olefiant gas. Now there is nothing to pre- 
vent olefiant gas becoming detached and taking different states of 
condensation, to give rise to bodies which by undergoing oxidation 
would produce fat acids and consequently fats. Since it has been 
known that the oil of potato spirit is also met with in the spirit obtain- 
ed from the refuse of the grape, and in the spirit procured from 
malt, and from the molasses of beet-root sugar, the assurance that 
the oil is a product of the fermentation of sugar appears to be com- 
plete. 

We ought even to be prepared to admit a phenomenon of the same 
kind as taking place in plants, when we see the sugar of their stems 
disappearing in the same ratio as their seeds or fruits become charg- 
ed with oleaginous matter : all the palms elaborate sugar before 
producing oil. 

It is upon chemical views of this kind that the second opinion as 
to the source of fat in animals has been formed, and which may be 
said to stand in direct contrast with that which assumes this sub- 
stance as pre-existing in the food, which regards it as produced in 
the blood itself, under the influences of the most intimate forces of 
animal life. For my own part, I adopt the view which supposes an 
animal to be supplied with fat already formed, mainly because it 
presents itself to me as more in harmony with the facts which I 
observe in our stables. Still I do not deny that it may be possible 
for a certain quantity of fat to be elaborated in the bodies of herbi- 
vorous animals, under the influence of a special fermentation of the 
sugar which forms an element in their food ; although I feel satisfied, 
from practical facts, that sugar plays no essential part in the fatten- 
ing of cattle. 

The formation theory, nevertheless, is not without data of a very 
curious and important kind, which require notice. Huber had found 
that bees fed upon honey, and even upon sugar, did not lose the 



420 FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 

power of producing wax for a long period. And Messrs. Milne 
Edwards and Dumas have lately confirmed the occasional accuracy 
at least of this conclusion. Their first experiments were unfavora- 
ble to the conclusions of the celebrated bee-master of Geneva. A 
swarm fed with lump-sugar yielded very insignificant quantities of 
wax ; three other swarms, placed in glazed hives, and fed on honey 
and water, failed to produce any wax ; but a fourth swarm gave a 
totally different result. 

The procedure by analysis was now instituted. The absolute 
quantity of wax contained in the body of a bee, or in the bodies of a 
certain number of bees, was first ascertained ; second, the quantity 
of wax in the combs constructed by the laborers was determined ; 
third, the quantity of wax contained in the honey consumed was dis- 
covered. The final result of the inquiry was, that a swarm of 2005 
laborers, after having in the course of a month consumed 12889.43 
grs. of honey, had produced 2407 grs. of wax.* 

Granting the accuracy of this conclusion, admitting that the bee 
fed upon honey has the power of producing wax, I might still ask 
whether it was therefore legitimate to conclude that the ox was 
endowed with any faculty of the same kind ? Still, to the interesting 
physiological fact above quoted, may be associated the remarkable 
fact of the conversion of sugar into butyric acid, observed by Messrs. 
Pelouze and Gelis, a conversion effected by mixing a small quantity 
of caseum with a solution of sugar, and adding a sufliciency of chalk 
to neutralize acid as it was formed. This mixture, placed in a tem- 
perature of from 77° to 86° F., by and by passes through a series of 
changes, the last term of which is the butyric fermentation. 

This butyric acid is a volatile, colorless, and very limpid fluid, 
having an odor that brings to mind at once that of vinegar and rancid 
butter. Although it has a resemblance to the acids which prevail 
in different kinds of fat, it nevertheless, by uniting with glycerine, 
constitutes a fatty body, butyrine, which forms about one-hundredth 
part in the constitution of butter, and must therefore be received as 
one of the elements of the fats ; and the observations of Arthur 
Young would even incline us to presume that butyric acid exerts a 
favorable influence in the fattening of animals. Comparative experi- 
ments satisfied Young that hogs fattened more quickly on food that 
had become sour, than on the same food before it had turned. Now 
it is very probable that there was production of butyric acid in the 
course of the fermentation. 

The question in reference to the formation of fat is of much more 
limited interest to the iarmer than to the physiologist. The agricul- 
turist, in fact, cares little whether a couple of pounds of honey con- 
sumed by a hive of bees will give origin to some 10 dwts. or so of 
wax ; the matter that concerns him is, as to the degree in which 
the roots or tubers that he grows are fattening ; and whether or not 
he can advantageously substitute a cheaper for a more costly article 
in his piggery or stalls ? And here, as in so many other places, 

* Vide Comptes rciulus tic r.Ae'i(U'mie <lcs Sciences t. xvii. p. 131. 



FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 421 

practice got the start of theory ; and I own, with perfect humility, 
that I think its conclusions are in general greatly to be preferred ; 
the universal custom of giving oil-cake and oleaginous seeds to our 
milch-kine and fatting oxen and sheep, appears to me to supply an 
argument of much greater force than any that can be obtained from 
chemical researches pursued in the laboratory. 

Such articles as the potato and the banana, which answer admi- 
rably for the keep of hogs after they are weaned, are not adequate to 
fatten them for the butcher ; they contain but very small quantities 
of fatty matter, and though the animals will grow rapidly upon them, 
and even attain to and maintain a certain condition, all thai is re- 
quired can only be secured by adding some other article to the ration 
that is richer in oleaginous or fatty principles. At Bechelbronn, 
whatever others have said on the subject, we find that our hogs will 
not fatten on potatoes alone ; so that I agree with Schwertz when 
he says, that while hogs will get into good flesh upon potatoes, and 
even seem to fatten for a time, they soon cease from improving, and 
only begin to advance again when they receive in addition an allow- 
ance of barley or of split peas or beans. 

A young pig will consume about 13 lbs. of potatoes per diem, into 
which, as analysis of the ashes informs us, there enters but about 
17.2 grs. of lime. But this quantity is probably too small to meet 
the demand for bone earth in a young animal in full growth, and 
hence the great advantage of the whey or small quantity of skim 
milk which is so commonly added to the potato ration. It ought to 
be laid down as a general rule, that young creatures as well as adults 
ought to have a ration which contains the earthy elements of the 
bony system, the azotized elements of the flesh, and the fatty matter 
of the fat. From a series of experiments which I undertook, in 
concert with Messrs. Dumas and Payen, it appears that all the arti- 
cles acknowledged the most powerful as fatteners, are those also 
that contain the largest proportions of fatty principles. The follow- 
ing substances contain the numerical quantities of matter soluble in 
ether in 100 parts : 

Coniiiinn iiiaizp 8.8, Drylucerii 3.5 

Beaked Lornljardy maize 7.8 Meadow hay 3.8 

Large white Parisian maize. ••• 8.1 African wlieat straw 3.2 

Rice 0.8 Ditto Alsace 2.2 

Oats 5.5 Ditto near Paris 2.4 

Ditto 3.3 Oat straw 5.1 

Rye 1.8 Beanmeal 2.1 

Rye floiir 3.5 Beans 2.0 

Hard Venezuela wheat 2.6 Haricots 3.0 

Hard African wheat 2.1 Peas 2.0 

Wheat Hour 2.1 Lentils 2.5 

Ditto 1.4 Potatoes 0.08 

Fine bran 4.8 Mangel-wurzel 0.1 

Coarsebran 5.2 Carrots 0.17 

Dry clover 4.0 Oil-cake 9.0 

M. Payen found that the oil was everywhere present in the seeds 
of gramineous plants. The embryo contains much, the husk less, 
the farinaceous portion still less. But maize and oil-cake contain 
about 9 per cent., whence the universally admitted superior fattening 
power of these two articles. 

36 



422 FATTY ELEMENTS 01-' FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 

If we now discuss particularly one or more of the rations or 
allowances to oxen put \ip to fatten, or to milch-cows, we shall find 
that they uniformly contain a larger quantity of fatty matters than 
the secretions, excretions, and fat which have heen produced under 
their influence. Thus a cow, in good condition, that produces 72 
pints of milk, containing 3.3 lbs. of butter, while she eats 220 lbs. 
of meadow-hay, will have consumed more than 6.6 lbs. of matter 
soluble in ether — fatty substances. Tlie quantity of fat contained 
in the food, over and above that which is discovered in the milk, has 
passed with the excrements, which are never entirely free from sub- 
stances analogous to fatty matters. 

With a view to comparing as accurately as is possible in inquiries 
of this kind, the quantity of fatty matter contained in the forage 
consumed by a cow, with that found in the milk and in the excre- 
ments, the following experiment was made. A cow, Esmeralda, 
No. 6 in the stable at Bechelbronn, calved on the 26th of September, 
and she was put to the bull again on the 4th of November. Up to 
the 22d of January (inclusive) Esmeralda received the usual allow 
ance, viz : 

After-math hay 11 lbs. 

Oil-cake 22 " 

Turnips Cti " 

Wheat chafl". 22 " 

and the milk she gave in the course of the month of January, 
amounted on the — 

PinlB. P.nts. 

1st to 12.9 12th 12.3 

2<1 12.3 ]:!th 11.4 

3(1 12.3 14th 11.4 

4th 11.4 I'nh 12.3 

5th 10.5 16th 10.5 

6th 12.3 17th 11.4 

7th 12.3 18th 10.5 

8th 12.9 19th 11.4 

9th 12.3 20th 11.4 

10th 10.5 21st 11.4 

llth • 11.4 22a 11.4 

The average quantity of milk, therefore, per day, in the course 
of the week that preceded the experiment, was 10.287 pints. 
From the 23d of January, when the ration w^as altered to — 

Hay 16.5 Ihs. 

Chopped wheat straw 9.9 " 

Beet-root 59.4 " 

the quantity of milk yielded was : 

Jniiimry. Pints. January. Pinti. 

23(1 11.4 27th 11.6 

24th 10.5 28th 11.4 

25th 10.5 29th 11.4 

20th 10.5 30th 11.4 

on an average 118 pints per diem ; a little more than with the form- 
er allowance. 

The excrement passed by this cow was analyzed during four days, 
from the 21th to the 27th of January ; the whole quantity being 
weighed moist every day, and well mixed, a mean sample of about 
6 oz. in weight was taken for analysis. This being stove-dried, the 



FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 423 

entire quantity of dry matter contained in the moist excrement was 
readily ascertained : 

Dates. Moist excrement. Dry excrement. Milk in pints. Milk in lbs. 

Jan. SM 40.7 lbs. 6.8 lbs. 10.5 13.5 

25 41.8 7.3 10.5 13.5 

26 02.1 9.0 10.5 13.5 

27 43.4 7.1 10.5 13.5 

188.0 30.2 42.0 54.0 

To ascertain the quantity of fatty or waxy substances contained 
in the food, the several samples were first treated with hot water, 
then with ether, and finally with a mixture of ether and alcohol boil- 
ing. The fatty element of the butter was determined by Peligot's 
method. 

Fatty Matters in the 
Food per cent. 

< 1st E.xperlment 3.6 

J 2d ditto 3.9 

j 1st Experiment 2.4 

)2d ditto. 2.0 



Hay... 

Straw . 



E.xcrements (dry) {^M ^Zto"""\ 



Fatty Matter ni t 

Excrements and 

Milk per cent. 

3.3 

3.9 

3.7 



Let us say, that the proportion of fatty substance contained per 
cent, in the several articles consumed as food, was as follows — 

Hay 3.7 

Straw 2.2 

Beet 0.1 

Dry e.\crements 3.6 

Milk 3.7 

and we shall have the results of the experiment in this shape : 

FOOD CONSUMED IN FOUR D.VYS. E.XCREMENTS AND MILK IN FOUR DAYS. 

Fatty matter. Fattv matter. 

Beet 237.6 lbs. 1667.3 grs. Excrements 30.4 lbs. 7688.1 grs. 

Hay 60.0 1776.1 Milk 54.3 14125.7 

Straw 39.6 6113.4 

Fatty matter in excrements 

Fattymatter in food. .249.56.8 and milk 21813.8 

The excretions 21813.8 

Fatty matter fi.xed or 

burned 3143.0 

The natural conclusion from this experiment appears to be this : 
that the cow extracts from her food almost the whole of the fatty 
matter it contains, and that she converts this matter into butter. 

It would perhaps be possible to make the proportion of butter 
contained in the milk to vary within certain limits. It is well known 
that the butter of cows in the same district varies notably according 
to the nature and abundance of the forage ; the butter of the same 
country-side, for example, has been ascertained to contain 66 of 
margarine to 100 of oleine in summer, and 186 of margarine to 100 
of oleine in winter. In the first case, the cows are grazing on the 
mountains, (the Vosges ;) in the second they are eating dry fodder 
in the stall. I have besides had an opportunity to make a direct 
experiment upon this subject, which appears to me quite conclusive. 
Having substituted for one half the allowance of hay an equivalent 



424 FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 

quantity of rape-cake, still very rich in oil, the cows were kept in 
excellent condition ; but tiie butter was extremely soft, and had the 
taste of rape-seed oil to a degree that was perfectly intolerable. 

I do not know a single instance in any of the systems followed at 
Bechelbronn, in which a milch-cow does not receive in her ration a 
quantity of matter analogous to fat, superior to that whicli is con- 
tained in the milk she yields. Having upon a certain occasion put 
a cow exclusively upon beet, I anticipated an unfavorable effect on her 
milk ; and in fact a very sensible diminution in all its valuable ele- 
ments occurred, and the animal began to suffer. By simply adding 
a few pounds of straw which had been taken away, the milk resumed 
its standard quality. The two rations thus composed may be con- 
trasted under the two points of view of contents in fat and contents 
in organic matter. 

In the ration of beet and straw (beet 119 lbs., straw 7^ lbs.) there 
were 140 dwts. 20 grs. of fatty matter ; in that composed exclusively 
of beet (132 lbs.) there were but 38 dwts. 14 grs. of fat. The ill effects 
of the beet-root ration could not be ascribed to deficiency of inorganic 
elements, for the phosphate of lime it contained amounted to 37 dwts. 
7 grs. — amply sufficient for all the purposes of the economy. 

The information we have from M. Damoi.seau, one of the most 
careful of the observers who have investigated the subject of the 
production of milk, confirms us in our views of the necessity of fatty 
matters in the daily ration of the milch-cow. The following are 
the elements of three of the rations for a cow in JM. Damuiseau's 
establishment. 

No. I. N... 2. No. 3. 

Beet, or mangel-wurzel. . 88 ll).s. Carrots 74 lbs. Potatoes 5.'> lbs. 

Bran 6.(i •' (i.fi " C.G 

Pollard. 5.5 " 5.5 " 5.5 

Lucern 6.li " n.fi " 6.6 

Oat-straw 13.'2 " 13-2 " 13.2 

Salt 0.11 " 0.11 " 0.11 

121.0 107.0 88.0 

Maximum. Medium. Minimum. 

Quantity of milk yielded • . From '25 to 215 pts. 16 to 18 pis. IZi pts. 

Let us now calculate the actual nutritive value of the different 
items in the above rations ; or, selecting one, let us lake that with 
the beet for particular consideration, as among the most usual. 

6.6 lbs. of bran and 5.5 lbs. of pollard at 5 per cent.=0.60 of fatty matter 

6.6 lbs. lucern 3 " =0..33 

13.2 lbs. oat-straw 5 " i^O.SO " 

1.53 

Whence it follows, that a cow here received upwards of 1,} lbs. 
of matter of a fatty nature with her food — a quantity more than suf- 
ficient to produce not only IG or 18, but the maximum quantity of 
25 or 26 pints of milk, very rich in cream. Did tlie cow receive an 
additional 40 l!)s. of beet-root, she would find something like 12 lbs. 
more of solid matter in this article, composed especially of sugar, 
which she would burn to keep up her lom])crature, and nearly 25 
dwts. of oily matter, which she would transfer to her milk, — to say 



FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 425 

nothing of new azotized principles which would be converted into 
caseine. 

If we now, by an easy transition, pass to the phenomena of fatten- 
ing, we still find that tlie principles which have been laid down can 
be most satisfactorily applied. Setting out from the numbers ob- 
tained from the experiments of Mr. Riedesel, which, in many points, 
agree with all I have seen myself, we arrive at the following con- 
clusions. 

An ox weighing 1320 lbs. avoird. will keep vip his weight upon' 
about 22 lbs. of good hay per diem. Put up to fatten, the same ani- 
mal would require about twice this quantity, say 44 lbs., upon which 
he would gain at the rate of about 2 lbs. per day. 

Now, if we even take Mr. Riedesel's conclusions as a little too fa- 
vorable, as giving at least the maximum nutritive value to the hay and 
its equivalents, we may still admit, with him, that 22 lbs. of hay will 
produce about 17 pints of milk, or about 2 lbs. avoird. of flesh, con- 
taining 0.55 lbs., or rather more than | lb. of fat. Now, 22 lbs. of 
hay contain nearly 12 oz. 12 dvvts. of principles soluble in ether, 
i. e. of fatty or waxy matter. 

The fatting ox, consequently, fixes a certain proportion of these 
principles in the same way as the cow. There is only this differ- 
ence, that the cow returns with the milk she yields a considerable 
quantity of the fat she finds in her food. There consequently exists 
an obvious relation between the formation of milk and fattening — a 
position which would gain support, did it require any, from a note 
which I owe to the politeness of M. Yvart, who, in summing up a 
long array of facts, concludes with these words : " The secretion of 
milk appears to alternate with that of fat. When a milch-cow fat- 
tens, she loses her milk ;" and the converse of the proposition is no 
less true ; when we would fatten a cow, we must let her go dry. 

The breeds of kine admitted to be the best milkers remain long 
lean after the calving. In some of the short-horned English breeds, 
the quantity of milk is often very considerable shortly after the 
calving ; but the animals are much disposed to get fat, and getting 
fat, the secretion of milk neither continues so long, nor is it so plen- 
tiful, as in some of the other less improved kinds. English hogs, 
which become much fatter than French hogs, appear not to be such 
good nurses. Now, if we admit that there is this intimate relation 
between the formation of milk and that of fat, we are obviously very 
near the admission, that articles of food containing fatty substances 
indispensable to the production of milk, are also indispensable to the 
production of animal fat. And, then, has it ever yet happened that 
animals have been fattened with food devoid of grease 1 I have not, 
for my own part, met with a single fact which countenances such a 
proposition. I have referred to the distinguished agriculturist, who 
attempted to fatten pigs upon potatoes, but who only succeeded by 
adding a certain quantity of graves to the food — an article which, as 
every one knows, contains a considerable proportion of fat in its com- 
position. 

M. Payen has, in fine, made some experiments which appear alto- 
36* 



426 FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 

gether conclusive, and from which it follows, that two Hampshire 
hogs which, having consumed 66 lbs. of gluten, and upwards of 30| 
lbs. of starch, had only gained Ilk lbs. ; while other two animals of 
the same breed, having been fed witb 99 lbs. of the flesh of sheeps' 
heads, containing from 12 to 15 per cent, of fat, had gained 35 lbs. 
Yet, judging from elementary analysis, these two rations were almost 
identical ; they contained the same quantity of dry nutritious matter. 
The first ration contained 26.4 lbs. of dry gluten, and 30.4 lbs. of 
starch ; the second contained 20.9 lbs. of dry flesh, and 15.4 lbs. of 
fat. The quantities of carbon and azote were, therefore, a little 
higher in the vegetable than in the animal ration ; but they differed 
notably in tliis, that the latter contained an equivalent of fat for the 
equivalent of starch contained in the former. 

In a second experiment, four hogs, fed upon boiled potatoes, car- 
rots, and a little rye, gained 117.7 lbs. ; while other four animals, 
of the same age, and in the same conditions, but fed upon sheeps' 
heads, gained as many as 226.6 lbs. 

In the course of these experiments, M. Payen was struck with 
this circumstance, that tlie increase in weight of an animal that is fat- 
tening being represented by 50 per cent, of water, 33.3 of fat, and 
16.6 of azotized matter, the conviction is forced upon us that he ac- 
tually fixes the greater proportion of the fat of his food in the cellu- 
lar tissue of his body. The first hogs, for example, had eaten 14.74 
lbs. of fat, and had gained 11.44 lbs. in weight; the four last re- 
ferred to had had 18.48 of grease, and had increased 14.74 lbs. in 
weight. 

It has now been the practice for several years, in various places, 
to maintain hogs in considerable numbers upon muscular flesh, horse- 
flesh ; and it has been ascertained that the article, if extremely 
lean, though it keeps the animals in good heart and condition, though 
they grow and thrive on it, yet they will not fatten. When they are 
to be got ready for the butcher, they must, in addition, be put upoa 
a course tliat is known to be proper to fatten them. 

Tlie scientific question of fattening having, of late j'ears, attracted 
very general attention, the opinions which have now been announced 
have been very actively contested. Among other arguments, the 
general freedom from fat of the bodies of carnivorous animals, and 
the usual fat state of those of the herbivorous races, has been cited. 
Whales have even mistakenly been included in the list of fat vege- 
table feeders ; but it is known to all naturalists, that the great ma- 
jority of the whale tribes, the whole of those that inhabit the northern 
seas, are carnivorous. And, indeed, the mention of this fact leads 
me to revert to one of the most curious problems in the physics of 
the globe — that, to wit, presented by the vast amount of animal life 
amidst the waters of the ocean, and its support by a quantity of 
vegetables which to us appear altogether inadequate to such an end. 
The beautiful researches of M. Morren, however, seem calculated 
to throw some light on this interesting subject, — that inquirer having 
shown that certain animalcules possess the faculty of decomposing 
carbonic acid in the same way as vegetables ; and it is probably in 



FATTY ELEMENTS OF FOOD, AND ON FATTENING. 427 

virtue of this power that the enigma is to be explained, of the source 
whence the myriads that people the deep derive their food. 

But is it absolutely true that herbivorous animals only abound in 
fat ■? Who has not seen fat dogs and cats ; and in the Cordilleras, 
where palm-trees abound, there is a particular species of bear, which 
lives in a great measure on the oily palm-nuts and young shoots of 
the palm-tree, which becomes remarkably fat, and proves a great 
attraction to the tigers of the country.* 

Before coming to a close with this discussion, I think it right to 
refer to the experiments of M. Magendie, who has so well establish- 
ed the fact, that the chyle of animals fed on fat food contains a large 
quantity of fat ; and that animals kept long on such food frequently 
become affected with what is called the fatty liver. f 

To sum up, then, experiment demonstrates that hay contains a 
larger quantity of fatty matter than the milk and excretions which it 
forms ; and that it is the same with all the other mixtures and varie- 
ties of food that are usually given to animals. 

That oil-cake increases the production of butter, and that, like 
maize, it owes the fattening properties it possesses to the large 
quantity of oil it contains. 

That there is the most perfect analogy between the production 
of milk and the fattening of animals ; that potatoes, beet, carrot, and 
turnip, only fatten when they are conjoined with substances that 
contain fatty matters, such as straw, corn, bran, and oil-cake of 
various kinds. 

That in equal weights, gluten mixed with starch, and flesh meat 
abounding in fat, have a fattening influence vn the hog, which differs 
in the relation of 1 to 2. 

Lastly, that fat food — food which will afford fat in the digestive 
canal — appears to be the indispensable condition of fattening. If it 
be necessary that the respiration be diminished or lessened in extent, 
this is only that the fatty substances taken into the stomach, and 
which have made their way into the blood, may not be oxidated, 
may not be burned ; not that their formation may be favored. 

AH these facts are in such perfect harmony with the simple view 
of assumption and assimilation of fatty matters, that it is difficult to 
conceive on what foundation the opinion can repose which would 
have them composed out of their elements in the animal body. 
Nevertheless, I am myself the first to admit, that more extensive 
experience may lead to the modification or even entire change of 
the opinion which I advocate. The facts on which that opinion is 
based, despite their number, are not probably yet sufficient to con- 
stitute a perfectly satisfactory or conclusive theory. New researches 

* These bears, evidently, cease to be carnivorous while they live on palm-nuts and 
leaves. For my own part, I do not think the point setUed yet. The fatty matter of 
the generality ol' vegetables is wax rather than grease. And then some of the herbiv- 
orous tribes seem never to get fat. — Eno. Ed. 

t I may here state the contrary fact, as announced to me by a physiological friend, 
in whose report I place great reliance, that the chyle of animals fed with substances 
that give mere traces of wa.xy matter, contains fat or oil that can he collected in large 
drops — Eko. Ed. 



428 ECONOMY OF FARM ANIMALS. 

are, therefore, indispensable : it would be requisite to show, that a 
cow kept on a regimen abundant in point of quantity, but as poor as 
possible in matters analogfous to fat, will continue to maintain her 
condition and yet yield milk abounding in cream ; and that it is 
really possible, as some persons affirm, to fatten animals rapidly on 
roots and tubers alone.* 



CHAPTER IX. 



OF THE ECONOMY OF THE ANIMALS ATTACHED TO A FARM. 
OF STOCK IN GENERAL, AND ITS RELATIONS WITH THE 
PRODUCTION OF MANURE. 

Agricultural industry generally extends to the breeding and fat- 
tening of cattle ; the breeding, or at all events the maintenance, of 
horses ; the breeding and feeding of sheep and swine. The cir- 
cumstances, indeed, in which the tiller of the ground sees himself 
spared the necessity of attending to these matters, are rare excep- 
tions to the general rule, and in fact only occur where it is easy to 
obtain abundant supplies of manure from without, or in those few 
favored spots where the fertility of ihe soil is such that it continues 
to yield its increase without addition in the shape of manure. In 
the vicinity of great centres of population, where dung can be bought 
cheap, or of guano islands, where a cargo costs a trifle, and in some 
tropical countries, large farming establishments may be found to- 
tally without stock in the shape of sheep and horned cattle. But in 
a general way the agriculturist is obliged to give himself up to the 
care of flocks and herds of one description or another ; and, in fiict, 
we now know that there is a certain and very indispensable relation 
to be maintained between the extent of surface under crop and the 
number of cattle to be provided for, variable as regards farms dif- 
ferently situated and circumstanced ; but invariable when circum- 
stances are the same, and the system of management pursued is 
similar in its principal features. 

The question as to whether the cultivation of grain or other use- 
ful plants, or the rearing of cattle, is more profitable, which is often 
agitated, must receive a different solution in regard to each different 
locality. In one place it may be more advantageous to breed cattle 
or horses ; in another to rear or fatten them : here, the production 
of milk, butter, and cheese, may be tlie best husbandry ; there, the 
growth of hay, (as for miles round London on the north and west ;) 
and again, wheat and the other cereal grasses may be the staples of 

* Whoever would try experiments in this direction, must be careful to mii his food ; 
one tiiticlc alone never a^'rees. 'I'lie Americans .say, a pii; will die upon pumpkins and 
upon apples alone; but he will live and fatten on a mixture ol' the two. I have my- 
self seen scores of oxen fattened upon turnips, with a moderate allowance of straw or 
bog-hay ; and have seen pigs get into admirable condition for the butcher on little more 
than potatues.— E.NO. Ed. 



ECONOMY OF FARM ANIMALS. 429 

production. Even supposing that the orrovvth of grain is that which 
is most advantageous on the whole, it by no nie*ans follows that the 
farmer shall give himself up to this exclusively; it is seldom that 
he can do so, indeed ; he must have manure, and this entails the 
necessity of keeping cattle. If the latter, however, be the least 
profitable item in the economy of a particular domain, it will of 
course be kept within as narrow limits as possible. 

In many places where the land is well adapted to the plough, and 
where the production of grain is unquestionably profitable, stock ap- 
pears to offer few advantages ; it sometimes happens, indeed, that the 
balance as regards the stall and cow-house is on the wrong side for 
the farmer,>\'hen the actual value of the forage that has been con- 
sumed is taken into the account. The loss is only made up for by the 
manure, which is in fact the return. This is the view that M. Crud 
obviously takes when he speaks of the stock upon a farm as a neces- 
sary evil* I am far from participating in his opinion ; the cattle 
u})on a farm are no evil, though they may be very necessary. To 
be satisfied of this, it is enough, in fact, to recollect the principle 
which has been established in treating of rotation courses, viz : 
That in no case is it possible to export a larger quantity of organic 
matter, and particularly of organic azotized matter, from a farm, 
than is represented by the excess of the same description of matter 
contained in the manure consumed in the course of the rotation. 
By acting otherwise, the standard fertility of the soil would inevi- 
tably be diminished. 

This principle recognised, and I believe that it cannot be disputed, 
it is obvious that a portion of the produce of the fields must be re- 
turned to them to fecundate them anew, and it is precisely this por- 
tion of the forage crops destined to furnish manure that must be 
consumed in the stable and cow-house. Reasoning abstractly, the 
forage plants which it is not intended should quit the farm, might be 
buried directly as manure, without being made to pass through the 
bodies of animals ; their fertilizing influence on the soil would come 
out sensibly the same ; and this is what is done, in fact, so often as 
we manure by smothering. But we have scarcely made the first 
step in the rudiments of agriculture before we discover the immense 
advantages of following the usual custom, which first employs as 
forage for cattle the crops that are grown with a view to the pro- 
duction of manure. And we shall by and by find, in fact, that by 
adding to that portion of these crops a supplement of forage plants 
which it would be legitimate to export, without trenching upon the 
fundamental principle above laid down, we obtain the same quantity 
of manure, and turn the whole of this supplement into useful forces, 
or into animal products which j)ossess a market value greatly supe- 
rior to that of the forage before its assimilation. It is only the price 
of this portion of the forage, fixed or modified by the cattle on the 
farm, which can fairly be set down to the debit account of wool 
grown, of power created, and of flesh and dairy articles produced. 

• Theoret. and Pract. Economy of AgriiUiI. vol. ii. p. 2.35, (in French.) 



480 HORNED CATTLE. 

As to the forage plants which are immediately turned into manure, 
it seems to me impossible to regard them as possessed of the proper 
market value ; the farmer could not have sold them at this. In my 
mode of looking at the thing, the cost of producing the forage crop, 
and the value that it actually has, constitute a circulating capital, 
the annual interest of which, estimated at a certain rate, expresses 
the true cost-price or value of the manure employed in the course 
of a rotation. In a word, in my eyes, the value of the manure 
which gives fertility to the soil is represented by the price of the 
labor, the rent charge, &c. — by the general outlay entailed by the 
growth of the forage from which it is obtained. 

I shall endeavor, by and by, to illustrate this topic by examples ; 
but in order thoroughly to understand this mode of estimating the 
price of manure, there are several elements wanting, which I pro- 
pose to assemble in this chapter. With this view, I shall first pre- 
sent the facts which I have been able to collect, or which I have 
myself had an opportunity of observing in reference to the economy 
of the domestic animals attached to a farm ; and I shall then make 
an attempt to deduce the relation that exists between the consump- 
tion of forage and litter, animal reproduction and increase, and the 
formation of manure. 

^ HORNED CATTLE. 

It were foreign to the purpose of this work, did I enter into the 
natural history of the animals that are usually attached to farming 
establishments ; neither will I pretend to discuss the relative merits 
of the different breeds of sheep and oxen, nor speak of the best 
methods of improving them. I confine myself to the varieties which 
I have on my own farm, or which I see on the farms of my neigh- 
bors, and upon wiiich I have opportunity of making daily observa- 
tions. It will be enough if I give a i)rief summary, in this place, 
of the general principles admitted by practical men of the highest 
name and authority ujjon these points.* 

Between the external forms of animals and the internal organs 
essential to life, there is the most obvious and intimate connection. 
A broad and deep chest is the sure indication of ample lungs and a 
good general constitution. The pelvis, or bony cincture formed by 
the rump and haunches, ought to be spacious in the females. A 
small head is generally the indication of a good kind. Horns in our 
domestic animals must be regarded as objectionable rather than use- 
ful ; and by adopting measures which tend to repress their growth, 
we undoubtedly favor both the production of flesh and wool. The 
strength of animals depends far more on the degree in which their 
muscular system is developed than on the mass of their bones ; it is, 
besides, flesh, not bone, that has value in ttie butcher's eyes ; so 
that the farmer's business is by all means to strive after a delicate 
but well-covered skeleton. Animals which have been indifferently 

* Cline, In General Report of Scotland ; Communication to the Board of Agricul- 
ttire ; Spencer on the choice of male animals for breeding from ; Cully's Introduction, 
&.C., on live stock, &r. 



BREEDING. 431 

fed while young, have often the bony system very disproportionately 
developed. 

Two modes are generally followed with a view to improving the 
external shape of domestic animals. One of these consists in only 
breeding from animals of the most faultless forms of the same race, 
and generally of close degrees of kindred ; another in crossing 
females with the males of a neighboring race, each possessing in 
the greatest degree the qualities which it is held desirable to trans- 
mit to the future race. The former of these plans is spoken of as 
the method of breeding in and in ; the second as the method by 
crossing. 

Certain disadvantages have been stated as belonging to the sys- 
tem of breeding in, by the side of several unquestionable and more 
immediate advantages. While the race acquires small bones and 
shows a decided disposition to take on fat readily, it is said after 
several generations to lose in constitution, to become more subject 
to disease ; the cows to give less milk, and the males, in losing their 
characteristic masculine forms, to show themselves less fit for pro- 
pagation. The English breeders who take this view of the subject, 
are, therefore, in the habit of having recourse to males of the same 
race, but bred at a distance from themselves. I must for my own 
part say, that I liave seen no reason to admit any ill effects from 
propagation continued in the same direct line. Our live-stock at 
Bechelbronn has not been otherwise renewed for a very long time, 
and without the race appearing to suffer in any way ; our bulls, on 
the contrary, have very much improved. 

Mr. Cline insists greatly on the selection of females not only of 
good shape, but so much above the mean height as to approach the 
standard of the males. When the bull is very much larger than the 
cow, the progeny is apt to fall off instead of improving ; the reason 
for which Mr. Cline finds in the large size of the foetus, the issue 
of a large male, which a .small female can neither accommodate 
properly in her womb, send easily into the world, nor suckle duly 
when it is born. Whatever we think of this explanation, there can 
be no doubt of the propriety of giving the principle pointed at the 
most careful consideration in practice. Mr. Cline refers to the great 
improvement that has been effected in the breed of English horses 
mainly through crosses with small barbs and Arabian stallions ; the 
introduction of Flemish mares would upon the same principle have 
been another means of still further improving the race. The neg- 
lect of this principle, Mr. Cline is of opinion, lies at the bottom of 
the numerous failures and disappointments that have been encoun- 
tered in attempts to improve the breed of horses. A striking illus- 
tration of it occurred some years back, when bay horses of great 
height were in particular request ; the Yorkshire breeders had 
their marcs covered by the tallest stallions that could be found ; but 
they immediately found that the progeny was merely long-legged, 
that it was narrow-chested, and without either weight or bottom. 

Spencer acknowledges with breeders in general that the bodily 
and constitutional qualities are almost always those that preponder- 



432 MANAGEMENT OF CATTLE. 

ated in ancestors, and that the qualities of the father predominate 
in the posterity, particularly as regards oxen and sheep. This point 
settled, the choice of a good male is evidently the first point of con- 
sequence in attempting to improve a hreed. As it is not possible, 
however, to find either a bull, or a tup, or a stallion, quite perfect, 
the one must be chosen that is most free from defect, particularly 
the defect or defects which we have it in view to correct in our 
breeding animals, our cows, ewes, and mares. Certainly no reason- 
able breeder would bring together animals that presented similar de- 
ficiencies ; on the contrary, he will strive to have his female served 
by the male which shows all the qualities in the very highest degree 
that are most wanting in her. On the w^hole, the association of 
animals of the same race appears to me the best mode of continuing 
desirable qualities, especially when this is conjoined with ample sup- 
plies of good food to the young. The influence of feeding is im- 
mense ; in my own neighborhood I see that the progenj' of the 
Bechelbronn bulls are often inferior both in stature and shape to 
those that are brought up in our own stables. 

Great size, however, is not always to be regarded as an improve- 
ment ; height is by no means a constant indication of vigor of con- 
stitution. Improvement in those particulars of form and stature 
which are ascertained to be best suited to the circumstances of the 
locality, the climate, the pasture, &c., are the points to be especially 
attended to. It is above all indispensable to breed animals of vigor- 
ous constitution : over-refinement of original races has often led to 
indifferent conformation of body, and to undoubted delicacy of con- 
stitution, which has rendered the herd or the flock much more ob- 
noxious to attacks of epizootic diseases. 

The degree of refinement of an original stock is evidently con- 
nected with tlie quantity and quality of the forage of the district. 
In cold and mountainous districts, where the herbage is scanty, it is 
necessary to restrain the ambition of having highly-improved stock 
within considerably narrow limits ; in such circumstances, the grand 
affair is to have a hardy race, not over nice in its food, which, through 
a considerai)le portion of the year, consists of but coarse grass. 

The ox {bos tnurvs) has been reduced to domesticity from the 
remotest ages, and nothing but conjecture can be otTered with regard 
to its original race. The animal accommodates himself with won- 
derful facility to the most opposite climatic circumstances; he mul- 
tiplies with astonishing rapidity in the hottest regions of the tropics; 
unknown at the period of the conquest, he has now overrun the 
steppes of the vast basins of the Oronoco and the Amazons ; and 
is met with in vast herds on the liigliest and coldest table-lands of 
the Andes, even up to the line of perpetual snow ; wherever there 
is food, he appears to thrive ; the extremes of temperature seem to 
have little or no influence upon him. 

The buflalo (the bos bubiilus of naturalists) is the only other mem- 
ber of this family that has been domesticated. He is fond of warmth, 
and is supposed to have been introduced into Italy towards the sixth 
century, from Eastern Asia. The buflalo is also found in Hungary 



MANAGEMENT OF CATTLE. 433 

and Greece ; and wherever he is met with, he is made serviceable 
as a beast of draught and burden, and as food. 

In breeding oxen, the great consideration is the bull. According 
to Thaer, the bull ought to have a short thick neck, the head short 
and small, the forehead broad and curled, the eyes black and spark- 
ling, the ears long and well placed, the chest broad and deep, the 
body long, the legs short and columnar in shape.* A well-made 
bull would serve seventy or eighty cows were the season spread 
equally over the whole year ; but as it is not so, Thaer thinks that 
twenty is as many as can properly be given to the same animal ; and 
this, in fact, is the number which we adopt at Bechelbronn. 

The cow gives more milk than any animal known. A great va- 
riety of external signs of a good milker have been particularized ; 
but it may be said that there is none infallible. In a general way, I 
think that race has much to do with the point ; the cow that is the 
offspring of a mother of a good kind, and a free milker, will herself 
be a good milker also. I will only add, that among the milch-kine 
which I have had an opportunity of observing, those that showed 
little tendency to take on fat, while they kept their appetite, have ap- 
peared to me to yield milk in largest quantity, ana for the longest time. 

The age at which it is advisable to put heifers to the bull, depends 
a good deal on the way in which they have been kept and brought 
up, and also on their growth. Young animals of a good kind, that 
have been well fed from the birth, and received all the care which 
contributes so powerfully to their development, will be ready to re- 
ceive the bull when they are between a year and a half and two 
years old. At Bechelbronn, we bull the greater number of our 
heifers at the age of about eighteen months. Whenever they enter 
into heat with any thing like force, whatever their age, they ought 
to be put to the bull, or there is risk of the disposition to receive him 
dying away, and never returning ; the heifer then begins to lay on 
fat, and ever after refuses the male. The rule, however, is not to 
allow the young female to be leaped until she is nearly at her full 
growth ; this, in fact, is the season when the desire for the male 
usually first shows itself. 

If there be no new indication of heat in the course of three or 
four weeks after the male has been admitted, there is reason to be- 
lieve that the animal is pregnant. The cow goes with calf about 
forty weeks ; the delivery generally takes place between the 277th 
and the 299th day after the access of the bull ; but periods so short 
as 240 days, and others so long as 321 days, have been observed-! 

The calf that is brought up with proper care is generally allowed 
to suck for five or six weeks ; but it sometimes happens that even 
at three weeks old the quantity of milk supplied by the mother is 
insufficient ; an additional quantity of food is therefore requisite. 
One of the best drinks for calves is made by mixing a proper quantity 
of oil-cake with tepid water ; the large proportion of vegetable ca- 
seum, of oily matter, and of phosphates which the substance contains, 

* Principles of Agriculture, vol. iv. p. 296. 
t Teissier in Annals of French Agriculture, vol. Ix. 3(1 series. 
37 



4t84 REARING CALVES. 

makes it peculiarly appropriate food for calves ; diffused in water, it 
in fact bears a close resemblance to milk in point of chemical com- 
position. It is now, too, that the calf begins to play with a little 
hay, so that it is always advisable to place some within its reach, 
the finest and softest portions being picked out. 

But it is by no means necessary that the calf should ever be allow- 
ed to suck ; it drinks without diilicuUy, or can be made to drink, as 
every dairy man and woman knows, by putting a finger or two into 
the animal's mouth under the surface of the drink. A little warm 
water is added to the milk during the first few days, in order to give 
it due warmth. Some begin from the very first to measure the 
milk ; but those who are best informed upon the subject of breeding 
and rearing do nothing of the kind. Crud allows his calves to drink 
as much milk as they will take for the first week. After this time 
they have an allowance of about seven pints of new milk mixed with 
the same quantity of fresh whey. They are weaned at seven weeks. 
From the age of between nine and ten weeks to a year, a calf will 
consume about a fourth of the ration of a grown cow, say 6^ lbs. of 
hay per diem. During the second year, the allowance of hay may 
be estimated at about 13 lbs., or a little more ; and in the third year 
it will amount to between 19 and 20 lbs. This is to be understood 
of cattle brought up carefully but frugally. 

In some of the best dairies of Switzerland, the procedure is different. 
During the first six weeks the calves are allowed to drink as much 
milk as they will take without a surfeit. At a month old they are 
served with chopped hay and roots, or better still, if the season ad- 
mits of it, with green clover or lucern, which they have at discretion 
till they are seventy days old. Treated in this way, a calf is nearly 
twice as large and twice as heavy as one that has been brought up 
economically. During the remaining 295 days that make up the 
first year, the animal is allowed from 8 to 9 lbs. of hay ; and this 
quantity is doubled during the second year. By proceeding in this 
way, a heifer at two years old may herself be a mother and contri- 
buting to the produce of the dairy. 

Our procedure at Bechelbronn is calculated on the Swiss plan. 
The calves suck till they are six or seven weeks old, being put to 
the cows night and morning. Any thing they leave is milked off. 
After numerous trials by gauging and weighing, I find that our 
calves take each during the forty-two days they are allowed to suck, 
from 528 to 600 pints of milk ; in other words, from l-U to 18|^ pints 
per diem. The quantity of milk which a calf takes immediately 
after its birth, does not indeed amount to any thing like even the 
smaller of these quantities : stUl it is considerable. 

A calf which weighed at its birth on the 18th of May 108.9 lbs., 
after having sucked, weighed 1 12.4 lbs. ; so that it had taken 3.5 lbs. 
of milk to its meal ; and as it had two of these in the day, 7.0 lbs. 
in all. The same calf, thirteen days afterwards, weighed 130.9 lbs. ; 
and after having sucked, 139.0 lbs. ; it had therefore taken 8.1 lbs. 
to its meal, or 16.2 lbs. per day. 

About the third week after birth, our calves have hay of the best 



REARING CALVES. 435 

quality set before them ; they take very little at first, but they soon 
get accustomed to it, and at weaning time it commonly suffices for 
their support. It may happen, however, that at this period they fall 
off a little, but they soon recover again ; still, if any of them appear 
delicate, it will be prudent to allow about a couple of quarts of milk 
a day mi.xed with water, for some little lime, which is gradually 
withdrawn as the animal becomes accustomed to its new food. 

Calves grow with great rapidity during the suckling time. The 
only experimental data with which I am acquainted in regard to the 
increase of weight of calves during the first period of their lives, are 
those of M. Perrault de Jotemps. These observations I shall asso- 
ciate with those which I have myself made at Bechelbronn, where, 
by a happy coincidence, we have the same Swiss race of cattle as 
Messrs. Perrault at Feuillasse. The weight of three calves at birth 
was found by M. P?rrault to be : 

No. 1 70.4 lbs, 

No. 2 83.8 

No. 3 80.8 

Average 78^ 

At Bechelbronn the weight of six calves at birth was : 

No. 1, born in May 108.9 lbs. 

>, February 88.0 

Ditto 90.2 

April 100.1 

June 88.8 

May 101.2 

Average 96.2 

M. Ernest Perrault found that a calf. No. 1, during the first 
eighteen days of its life increased on an average 2.8 lbs. per diem ; 
No. 2 increased at the rate of 1.8 lbs. per day ; and No. 3 at the 
rate of 2.7 lbs. per day ; average increase, 2.4 lbs. per day. An- 
other calf, born at Feuillasse, which weighed 101.2 lbs., when nine- 
teen days old weighed 151.2 lbs ; so that it had gained 50 lbs., or at 
the rate of 2.6 lbs. per diem ; a rate which corresponded precisely 
with what was observed in the case of nine other calves fed for the 
butcher, the average increase of which per diem was 2.7 lbs., during 
which each has had about 19.3 pints of milk daily. 

The conclusions come to at Bechelbronn bear a close resemblance 
to those of Feuillasse : 

A calf which at birth weighed 108.9 lbs. 

Weighed 13 days afterwards 139.0 

Increase in 12 days 30.1 Increase per day, 2.5 lbs. 

A calf born 12th of Feb. weighed. . 88.0 lbs. 
On the 30th of March it weighed- . 171.6 

Increase in 46 days 83.6 Increase per day, 1.8. 

The same calf, weaned the 21st of 

April, weighed 193.6 lbs. 

Increase in 21 days 22.0 Increase per day, 1.03. 

It is obvious, therefore, that from the time of weaning, the growth 
«eases to be so rapid; the transition from the milk diet to one of 



436 REARING CALVES. 

hard dry food, is often critical for young animals ; and I have al- 
ready said that it is one at which they frequently lose weight. 

If we reckon tlie daily increase from birth, that is to say, for 69 
days of mixed alimentation, we have 1.5 lb. for the quantity . 

Crescent, born the 27th of June, weighed 88.8 lbs. 

Eleven days later • 112.1 

Increase 2,1.3 per day, 2.1 lbs 

At the age of 37 days he weighed 188.1 

Increase in 2<i days 27.1 per day, 2.5 

Six days afterwards he weighed 202.4 

Increase in 6 days 14.3 per day, 2.3 

Another calf at birth weighed 101.2 

At weaning, aged 41 days 189.2 

Increase 88.0 per day, 2.1 

These various observations give about 2.2 lbs. for the average 
daily increase of a calf in weight during the period it is sucking. 
The data of M. Perrault make it a little higher, 2.7 lbs. So that il 
may be assumed that a calf which is receiving from 15 to 19 pints 
of milk in the day, will be gaining 2.48, or very nearly 2k lbs. in 
weight per diem. 

It will readily be understood that in places where milk is of con- 
siderable value, as in the neighborhood of cities, the farmer may find 
his profit in selling that article directly rather than in turning it into 
veal or beef, more especially if the usage of the district be to give 
the calves milk till they are tiiree or even four months old. Noth- 
ing, in my eyes, can justify such a needless e.vpenditure of milk ; 
especially since I have had an opportunity of witnessing what I may 
call the natural course of rearing cattle in the steppes of South 
America. There the young animals only receive milk in any thing 
like quantity for two or three weeks ; they soon get accustomed to 
live on grass. In the warmer countries of the earth, too, cows give 
much less milk than they do in temperate latitudes, and the secre- 
tion also dries up much sooner. The value of the milk, and the 
high price of butter and cheese, are unquestionably at the bottom 
of the immense slaughter that takes place in France among the 
calves, even at a very early age, when they are fat, but do not weigh 
more than from 110 to 112 lbs. This circumstance undoubtedly 
stands in the way of the production of meat in that country, and 
causes the notorious scarcity of moat of the best quality. Of the 
two millions of calves which it is calculated are slaughtered in 
France, .-^ot^lis are killed before they are a month old, and when they 
do not weigh, one with another, more than from 90 to 110 lbs. But 
we have seen that at two months old the weight will have increased 
to from 154 to 176 lbs., more than half as much again ; so that, by 
merely keeping the animals for one month more, the quantity of 
butcher-meat brought to market would be increased by about 
120,000,000 lbs.* 

It does not by any means follow, however, as the excellent au- 
thority I have quoted seems to think, that this increase of butcher- 
meat would add to the actual amount of food produced by the agri- 

* Perrault de Jotemps, in Journal d'.Agriculttue, t. v. 



REARING CALVES. 



437 



cultural industry of the country. To produce 2 lbs. of veal, in fact, 
I have shown that something like 22 lbs. of milk must be consumed ; 
but it is evident, that 1,200,000,000 of pounds of milk represent an 
amount of nutritive matter superior in value to 120,000,000 of pounds 
of veal. Could the production of the additional quantity of meat in 
the course of the second month be effected by means of any other 
tbod less costly than milk, which is itself a fluid of great value as 
food, with ordinary forage, for example, or linseed tea, or oil-cake, 
&c., the state of the question would be changed, and there would 
then be no doubt of the advantage to the community of the addi- 
tional supply of butcher-meat. This indeed is so well understood, 
that all the efforts which have been made to improve upon the ordi- 
nary and simply natural mode of rearing young cattle have been 
directed with a view to economizing milk. The interesting work 
of M. Ernest Perrault, from which I am about to make several ex- 
tracts, was not written with any other purpose. 

M. Perrault set out with the view of ascertaining experimentally, 
1st, whether the large quantity of milk generally allowed to sucking 
calves is really indispensable, and whether it is possible to diminish 
it without detriment to the animals ; 2d, whether a portion of the 
milk can be replaced by hay-tea, an article prepared by pouring 14 
or 15 pints of boiling water upon a pound of fine meadow-hay, and 
infusing for a few hours. 

The observations were made upon three calves taken after wean- 
ing. A was kept for 94 days on the usual allowance to calves at 
Feuillasse ; B had a smaller quantity of milk, and from the 42d day 
after birth had an increasing allowance of solid food ; C in the 
course of the comparative experiment had 476 pints of hay-tea, and 
as it is impossible to regard the infusion as of higher nutritive value 
than the article from which it is prepared, I shall set down this drink 
as equal to 28^ lbs. of hay. The allowance of milk was stopped 48 
days after the weaning. 

A, B, and C were kept on their respective rations for 95 days. 
The three were kept for the first 18 days on milk entirely, during 
which it was calculated that each had had from the mother 337 
pints. Here are the rations in a tabular and comparative manner. 



A. 
On the usual allowance. 


B. 

On a reduced allowance of 
milk. 


C. 

On hay-tea. 




c 

'S. 
c 

IS 






c 

■3. 


Si 




e 
'S. 
c 




Food, 94 days . . . 
Suckling, 18 days 

Days 112 


1460 
348 

1808 


lbs. 
374 

374 


Food, 95 days . • 
Suckling, 18 day^ 

Days 113 


1216 
348 

1564 


lbs. 
396 

396 


Food, 95 days • • 
Suckling, 18 days 

Days 113 


232 
348 


lb<. 
591 


580 


591 



37» 



488 REARING CALVES. 

It would have been desirable to have had these three calves 
weighed immediately after the termination of the experiment ; as 
this was not done, the results have not the whole of the precision 
that seems desirable. Nevertheless, M. Perrault from his observa- 
tions concludes : 

1st. Th.1t A, kppt on milk alone, weighed at birth. . . 88 lbs 
At the age of 432 days 771.0 

Total increase 683.0 

Increase per day 1.5 

2d. That B, on the reduced allowance of milk, 

weighed at birth 83.6 lbs 

At the age of 224 days 404.2 

Total increase 320.6 

Increase per day 1.4 

3d. That C, on hay-tea, weighed at birth 111.2 lbs. 

At the age of 101 days 270.6 

Total increase 159.4 

Increase per day 1.67 

M. Perrault's general inference is, that the calf which had the hay- 
tea ration grew more rapidly than either of the other two brought 
up either on pure or on dilute milk. The differences, however, are 
within the limits of the variations noted in animals that are reared 
on the same ration. 

If we reduce the various articles consumed in these experiments 
to food of the same nutritive value — to hay, for example — we find, 
that — 

A consumed in 112 days, 1357 lbs. of hay* 

B " 113 " 1137 

C " 113 " 906 

The minimum ration for the maintenance of calves, to which 

M. Perrault comes from his experiments, differs little from that which 

we think amply sufficient at Bechelbronn ; and our animals certainly 

are not inferior to those of Feuillasse. This fact may be judged of 

by the following particulars, which I have selected as affording the 

elements of contrast with M. Perrault's B and C : 

Sophy weighed at birth 100.1 lbs. 

At the age of 102 days 279.4 

Total increase 179.3 

Increase per day 1.76 

Food consumed : Milk 523 parts, weighing 684 lbs. = hay 297 lbs. 
Hay 539 

In all 836 

Rosa at birth weighed 96.8 lbs. 

At the age of 239 days 473.0 

Total increase 376.2 

Increase per day 1.58 

This calf consumed : Milk 528 pints, weighing 684 lbs. = hay 297 lbs. 
Hay 1773 

In all 2070 

* Milk must be regarded in the licht of forage, so that its rquivalont should be stated. 
Assuming milk to consist of 12.61 dry matter and 37.39 water, I find by direct analysis 



REARING CALVES. 



439 



Without calling in the assistance of hay-tea, consequently, by 
bringing up on milk for seven weeks, and giving forage as soon as 
possible, it is obvious that we obtain results fully as good as those 
of M. Perrault. 

I have said that it was during the period when calves are suck- 
ing, or receiving a regular allowance of milk, that the increase of 
weight was most rapid. As the animal approaches the term of its 
complete development, the weight, in an equal interval of time, 
increases at a progressively diminishing rate ; but from the data 
w-hich I have collected, but which are not very extensive, it appears 
that the increase is very regular until the full growth is attained. 
From this period the animal continues stationary, if he merely 
receives the ration of maintenance ; any variation observed is purely 
accidental, and loss or gain one day is compensated by gain or loss 
on another. The adult animal, which does not lay on fat, thus 
acquires a standard weight, which is preserved for a term of years 
unchanged, until the period of decrepitude and decay arrives. 

It is not unimportant to ascertain the progressive increase in 
weight of cattle ; the balance is a means which the breeder and 
feeder ought not to neglect ; it is a powerful check upon his ser- 
vants, and a sure tell-tale in regard to the state of the stock at any 
moment. A conscientious herdsman is a most precious person on a 
farm ; but the more I study breeding and feeding, the more I am 
satisfied that the most trustworthy agent of all is the balance. Fre- 
quent weighings are necessary, in order to keep a regular account 
of the state of the cow-houses. I here append such absolute obser- 
vations as I have made on the increase of weight in horned cattle, 
with an expression of regret that I have not been able to present my 
reader with more numerous data.* 



Names of Beasts. 



Weight at 


Age when 


Weight at 


Increase 


binh. 


weighed. 


this time. 


per diem. 


lbs. 


Davs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


82 


56 


180 


1.93 


" 


156 


288 


1.45 


80 


168 


176 


1.55 


" 


168 


270 


1.25 


88 


82 


178 


1-21 


" 


164 


254 


1.43 


" 


264 


388 


1.59 


90 


83 


202 


1.47 


91 


102 


254 


1-76 


90 


103 


216 


1.34 




203 


312 


1.56 


88 


108 


224 


1-38 




190 


304 


1.56 


" 


290 


482 


1.83 


88 


119 


216 


1.25 




201 


284 


1.07 


" 


301 


452 


1.32 



Remarks. 



Victoria . . 

Ditto 

Susan — 

Ditto 

Gallop ... 

Ditto 

Ditto 

Schwartz. 
Sophy. ... 
Mignonne 

Ditto 

Margot . . . 

Ditto 

Ditto 

James. ••• 

Ditto 

Ditto 



Under a year old. 



that 100 of this dry matter contains 4.0 of azote : so that 100 of milk contains 0.50 
azote. This shows that 230 of milk are required to replace 100 of good meadow-hay 
containing 1.50 azote. 

* As the weights were merely relative, I have neglected the fractions in turning 
the French kilogramme into avoird. pounds. 1 have, however, given the true incre 
ments of weights per diem — Eno Ed. 



L-4J 



INCREASE OF WEIGHT OF STOCK. 



Names of Beasts. 



Weight at Age when 
birth. weighed. 



Weight at Increase 
this time, per diem. 



Remarks. 



Petrel 

Ditto 

Ditto 

Rosa 

Stern 

Ditto 

Ditto 

Chastel 

Ditto 

Eichaas 

Ditto 

Castor, 2d bull. 
Castor, 1st bull. 



89 

90 

100 



Days. 
147 
2-29 
329 
2:{9 
275 
3.57 
436 
465 
547 
730 
811 
796 

1009 



lbs. 

270 
378 
538 
430 
570 
732 
880 
972 
1080 
976 
1074 
1740 
1602 



lbs. 

1.36 

1.40 

1.49 

1.58 

1.91 

1.93 

2.00 

2.09 

2.00 

1-34 

1.34 

2.26 

1.65 



From 1 to 3 yrs. old. 



Become fat, killed. 
Ditto. 



By way of pendant to these results, I give two series of weighings, 
one of which has reference to the increase of weight of a heifer, on 
which I made a number of consecutive observations ; the other was 
undertaken with a view to ascertain the variations which milch-kine, 
aged more than three years, may experience : 



Pates heifer weighed. 



Gain between one 
Weight, weighing and anolher. 
lbs. lbs. 



Sept. 5 369.8! 

" 9 374.0 j 

" 23 393.8 

JVov. 3 429.0 

" 28 469.4 

Jan. 29 550.0 

Apl.21 678.4 

July 9 884.4 

Aug. 3 950.4 



42 

19.8 
35.2 
40.4 
80.6 
128.4 
206.0 
66.0 



Time 
elapsed. 



14 
41 
25 
62 

82 
79 



1.40 

1.41 
0.85 
1.21 
1.32 
1.50 
2.48 
2.64 



Fed with hay and 
roots. 



Was fed on green 
clover at discretion. 



TABLE OF MILCH-KINE THREE YEARS OF AGE AND UPWARDS. 



Names. 



Age. 



Esmeralda 3 

Orphan 3 

Galatea 6 

Gitana 6 

Hannchen 7 

Paysanne 7 

Ratlalea 8 

Prima Donna 8 

Formosa 9 

Belle et Bonne 11 



1st 

weighing. 

lbs. avoir. 
1445 
1315 
1540 
1320 
1100 
1449 
1672 
1784 
1.573 
1346 



2d 
eighing. 
s. avoird. 

1555 

1434 

1394 

1386 

1236 

1540 

1727 

1654 

1001 

1287 



Interval between Differences 
per day. 



Difference, the we: 

Days. 
110 
119 
146 

66 
136 

91 

55 
130 

28 

59 



lbs. 

+1.3 

+1.5 

—1.7 

+0.8 

+0.2 

+ 1.1 

+0.6 

—1.5 

+0.4 

—0.6 



Taking the preceding numbers as the authority, and until we have 
a larger number of weighings, I think we may conclude that the 
living weight of cattle of the Swiss breed increases by the follow- 
ing quantities per diem : 

During the period of suckling at the rate of 2.4 lbs. 

Under three years 1.5 

Above three years 0.2 

The increase of weight of growing animals depends much on the 
kind of food they have ; and it is matter of great moment to know 
the precise amount of fodder which neat cattle require in order to 
thrive. Those who have treated of it specially, are as far from 
being agreed as to the proper ration ; and then many who have 
specified the kind and quantity of the food, have neglected the ages, 



ALLOWANCE TO CATTLE. 441 

the absolute weights, the amount of labor required, and the milk ob- 
tained from the animals. It is subject of simple observation, that an 
animal of great size, all things else being equal, will require a larger 
quantity of forage than another of less bulk. 

Once the allowance of food is well established, it is greatly to be 
desired that it be continued with the greatest regularity. Nothing 
is more injurious to cattle than stinting. Still, there is a term in 
every year when the live stock, or some portion of them, at least, 
are almost necessarily stinted in their food ; in the depth of winter 
the animals that are not put up to fatten, consume little or nothing 
but straw. At this season, consequently, the stock fall off consider- 
ably in flesh, in strength, and in the milk they give ; and when the 
loss has been very great, the animals are sometimes too far gone to 
recover when the spring has come round. This state of things is 
greatly to be deplored, and, indeed, ought to be viewed as most pre- 
judicial ; it will be altogether impossible to advance the economy of 
neat cattle to the point of perfection which it is fitted to attain, until 
means are taken to secure every portion of the stock, at every period 
of the year, a sufficiency of properly nutritious food. Happily, with 
the progress of agriculture, this condition is becoming every year 
more and more easy ; the introduction of roots, (turnips and mangel- 
wurzel,) and of tubers, (potato,) into the routine of every farm that 
is respectably managed, supplies a fodder, through the whole of the 
winter, that is equivalent to the grass and other green meats of 
spring and summer. 

Thaer fixes at 13 lbs. the quantity of hay per diem which a cow 
requires for her maintenance in perfect condition ; and if the animal 
be in milk, he allows as many as from 22 to 33 lbs. But the ration 
must vary, as I have said, with the weight of the animal. M. Per- 
rault states 27 lbs. as the allowance for a milch-cow weighing about 
880 lbs. ; he having, in his experience, found that an animal in milk 
required about 6^ lbs. of hay for every 220 lbs. of living weight. 
Pabst, who paid great attention to the feeding of cattle, admits, that 
for the ordinary allowance of an ox doing nothing, or of a cow which 
is dry, 3.85, or upwards of 3^ lbs. of hay, are required for each 220 
lbs. of carcass weight ; 4.4, or about 4^ lbs., if the animal be a 
draught-ox; and 6.0, or upwards of 6^ lbs., if it be a milch-cow. 

The inquiries which I have made into this subject have led me to 
conclusions somewhat different ; from which I infer, that the rela- 
tion between the weight of the living animal and the necessary fod- 
der is not an invariable quantity. A very large ox or cow, relatively 
to its weight, requires less food than an animal of smaller dimensions. 
And this circumstance is a grand argument with those breeders who 
are in favor of very large cattle ; they say, that if a large ox con- 
sumes more food than a small one, still the increase of consumption 
is by no means in the ratio of the increase of weight. 

The milch-cows at Bechelbronn have no more than 33 lbs. of hay 
per head per diem, or the equivalent of this quantity of forage. But 
the smallest creature on the fiirm, at the time my experiments were 
made did not weigh less than 1110 lbs. (79 stone, 4 lbs.) ; the rela- 



442 



FEEDING ALLOWANCE. 



tion of the living weight to the food being, therefore, as 100 is to 
2.73, say 2?. 

The largest cow, again, weighed 1784 lbs., (127 stone, 4 lbs.,) so 
that the relation is here as 100 is to 1.85, or I'r.^ths. The average 
relation, taking the whole of the cows in the stable, came out as 100 
is to 2.25; in other words, for every 100 lbs. of carcass weight, 
2\ lbs. of meadow-hay per day had to be allowed. 

It thus appears, from these inquiries, that growing animals require 
more food relatively to their weight than when they are adult. The 
young animals, upon which I made my observations, were from 5 to 
20 months old ; and for this age I found that for every 100 of living 
weight 3.08, or upwards of 3^ lbs., of hay were required. The fol- 
lowing table will give my conclusions at a glance : 







V 


■c 




^-:! 


•^•v 


"o « 




73 


1 
■a 




IS 

^ G K 


Average age 


9 P in 

" o'a 


£■3 S 






S 


ei 


S o 


iil 


of the several 


0) '" S 


G -^ :i 
o £ o 


fe bt w 


REMARKS. 


< 




1 


ii' 


animals. 


S; — B 












lbs. 


lbs. 


months, days. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 




No. 1 
2 


107 
119 


418 


14.3 


3 2C 


209 


7.15 


3.43 


In Februarj'. 


3 

4 


126 
130 


' 484 


14.7 


4 6 


242 


7.35 


3.06 


ditto. 


5 


205 
















6 

7 


170 
1.58 


. 1267 


36.0 


5 9 


311.8 


18.0 


2.89 


July. 


8 


115 
















9 
12 
9 


163 ' 

200 

328 




11.0 


5 10 


297.0 


5.5 


3.70 


February. 




9.3 


6 23 


361.4 


4.65 


2.53 


Septem. 


3 


200 
















4 


289 


- 2479 


66.0 


9 5 


495.8 


33.0 


2.06 


.July. 


1 
10 


239 
















9 


341 
















3 


303 
















4 


302 


. 2536 


62.7 


9 18 


507.3 


31.35 


2.47 


ditto. 


1 


205 
















10 


252 
















11 


304 




22.0 


10 


627.0 


11.0 


3..'«) 


February. 


12 


371 




19.1 


13 5 


550.0 


9.55 


3.48 


ditto. 


13 
14 


748 
483 

Averag 


2063 
e per c 


62.7 
ent. of h\ 


20 5 
ins weicht* • • • 


1027.0 


31.35 


3.05 


ditto. 


3.08 









In the course of the experiments, the calves were kept on good 
meadow-hay, allowed them at will, according to our usual custom. 
The hay that was put into the crib once a day was weighed, and an 
account was kept and deducted of any that had been left of the pre- 
vious day's allowance. The length of time during which each sev- 
eral experiment was continued, varied from 2 to 13 days ; and I have 
thought it right to indicate the season of the year, lest that should 
have any influence. To sum up, then, it may be said, that for every 
100 of lining weight neat cattle require : 



FEEDING SALT. 443 

For simple sustenance (Pabst) 0.75 or J lbs. meadow-hay. 

When laboring (Pabst) 2.0 " 

When in milk (Pabst) 3.0 " 

(Perrault) 3.12 " 

" " (Boussingault, large cows) 3.73 " 

Growing rapidly (Boussingault) 3.08 " 

The forage ought to be given to cattle with great regularity, and 
care should be taken that they do not eat too hastily. Generally 
speaking, they have their allowance three times a day, constituting 
so many meals, which, however, are well divided, the whole quan- 
tity for each meal not being placed before the animal at once. This 
precaution is particularly necessary when the allowance consists of 
green fodder. The watering should take place in the intervals be- 
tween meals, the animals being driven to the trough night and 
morning ; though, when the heat is excessive, it is better to water 
them three times a day. The water ought to be of good quality, 
though, if it have no deleterious substance dissolved in it, cattle 
seem to make no objection to that which is turbid, and which can- 
not, we should think, be very palatable. Our cattle are watered, 
during a part of the year, with water from a shaft pierced through 
a highly argillaceous soil. Cattle seem to dislike excessively cold 
water ; they then drink as little as possible. The cattle in the great 
South American plains, drink water at a temperature of from 85° to 
97° F. In Europe, the best water in point of temperature in winter 
is that of a deep well. 

Every one is familiar with the taste which herbivorous animals 
show for salt, and this is one of the articles which is advantageously 
made to enter into the ration when its price is not too high. In 
France, it is absolutely necessary to use the article with extreme 
parsimony — a circumstance which I much regret, and which I can- 
not but view as prejudicial to rural economy : — [in England, where 
the odious salt-tax has been got rid of, salt, of the most beautiful 
quality, is one of the cheapest of all manufactured substances.] I 
know that many feeders do not think salt indispensable ; but their 
authority is opposed by that of some of the highest names in Ger- 
many and England, and my own mind has long been made in regard 
to the value, to the excellent effects of this substance. I ascertain- 
ed, for instance, that milch-kine, though they would not do upon 
potatoes alone, throve very well when they had from two or two and 
a quarter ounces of common salt added to the ration. A celebrated 
English breeder, Mr. Curwen, recommends about 3| ounces of salt 
to be given daily to cow's and heifers in calf, and to draught-oxen, 
and something less to fatting oxen, to young animals, and to calves.* 

The high price of salt in France does not allow us to be so liberal 
at Bechelbronn ; yet we make a distribution of the article three 
times a week, and in quantities which bring the allowance to some- 
thing more than about an ounce and a half per day. By way of 
eking out the allowance of saline matter, we further supply, from 
time to time, a quantity of Glauber salt, which comes in all to rather 

* Sinclair, Agriculture. 



444 MILCH-KINE. 

more than half an ounce per head per diem. The use of this salt, 
sulphate of soda, has long been common in Alsace, and also on the 
other side of the Rhine ; and its effect on the health of horses and 
of sheep, as well as of horned cattle, has been recognised as highly 
advantageous. In Wurtemberg, the horses have, very commonly, 
725 grains, neat cattle 463 grains, sheep 305 grains, and swine 250 
grains of Glauber salt twice a week.* 

Salt appears to be more especially useful in hot weather and in 
warm climates. In the steppes of South America, it is held by the 
llama keepers as an axiom that cattle cannot live without salt. 
Wherever a flock thrives particularly well, it may be averred, a 
priori, that there is a salado there, a salt-lick of the North Ameri- 
cans, or place where there is a salt-spring. In the savannas that 
are without saline springs, the herdsmen make a distribution of salt 
every day. On the plateau, or table-land, of Nueva Granada, com- 
mon salt is replaced with Glauber salt, as in Alsace and Wurtem- 
burg, and, I may say, that it was matter of much interest to me to 
find the same custom prevailing on the table-lands of the Andes 
as upon the banks of the Rhine. 

§ II. MlLCH-KINE. 

I have already had occasion to say, that the signs by which the 
qualities of kine as milkers were sought to be appreciated, are some- 
what deceitful. Still, I am far from denying that practice and ex- 
perience do not enable many persons to pronounce with some cer- 
tainty upon this particular. The power of doing so, however, is in 
some sort the peculiar privilege of him who possesses it ; at least, I 
have seen all the general rules that have been laid down on the sub- 
ject fail : I have seen cows of the most opposite conformations 
equally productive. I have also said, that race or descent had much 
to do with this quality ; the heifer that comes of a mother, a good 
milker, will be very likely to turn out a good milker also. The 
legitimate way, therefore, of obtaining a good race of milch-kine, is 
to breed them from a stock that is already noted in this respect. At 
the time of my penning these lines, there are two animals on the 
farm that are remarkable as milch-kine : one is a tall, unseemly 
animal, the bones projecting, and altogether thin and miserable ; the 
other is a small cow, with rounded outlines everywhere, the bony 
frame but little conspicuous ; her skin soft, her hair sleek and fine. 
Nevertheless, these two animals have one character in common — 
the udder is of extraordinary size. 

We ought not to be hasty in judging of the value of a milch-cow 
after the first calf; age has great influence on the secretion of milk. 
It is generally allowed that a cow does not attain to her maximum 
capacity of yielding milk until she has passed her sixth year. 

With regard to the means we have of judging of the age of a cow, 
they are principally derived from the horns. The teeth do not af- 
ford us any indication, as in the horse and sheep. In the ox, about 

♦ Communicated by M. Schatleiiiiniin. 



MILCH-KINE. 



445 



the fifth year, there is a ring formed about the root of each horn ; in 
the cow, this ring makes its appearance after the first calving, and 
from this epoch there is a new ring formed each year, which pushes 
on the former one. In aged animals these rings have become 
faint, and can scarcely be counted. It is also evident that the horns 
which, in early life, were thicker at the base, and tapered gradually 
towards the tips, about the ninth or tenth year of the animal's life 
present an opposite conformation ; they exhibit a kind of constriction 
at the roots. The depression above the eye increases with age, and 
the false hooves become long and often bent. 

Thaer reckons that, one with another, in well-regulated establish- 
ments, cows will continue in milk for about 280 days, and yield in 
all about 2265 pints, or 283 gallons. But it is certain, that the yield- 
ing of a cow varies greatly with circumstances, race, age, climate, 
and individual. The cows that graze at liberty in South America, 
do not give more than about three pints of milk per diem ; which, as 
it is almost wholly used in bringing up the calf, the dairy is there 
of very little importance. In established farms, a cow is reckoned 
to yield about 40 lbs. of cheese per annum. Mr. Curwen estimates 
the quantity of milk at 6580 pints, or 822 gallons, per cow ; M. Per- 
rault states it at but 2992 pints, or 374 gallons ; and Mr. Low gives 
the quantity at 5994 pints, or 749j^ gallons. The differences between 
these several quantities are obviously enormous, and can scarcely 
be reconciled with any conceivable diversity of circumstances. 
They are probably connected with the method taken to ascertain the 
quantities. 

The following table comprises the whole of the statements with 
which I am acquainted. 



Z^ 



France : La Feuillasse (Ain) 
Lompries (Ain) . . 
Roville (Meurthe . . 
Lyoiinais (montagnes) 

Beclielbronn (Bas-Rhin) 

England 

Do 

Belgium; Antwerp . . . 

Do 

Holland : Low Countries . 

Do 

Campine . . . 

Saxony : Meissen .... 

Altenburg . . . 

Austria: Carinthia . . . 

Prussia: Moeglin .... 

Neighborhood of Berlin 

Switzerland 

HotTwyll . . 



Perrault de Jotemps 

D'Angeville. 

De Dombasle. 

(iroenier. 

Le Lei and Boussin- 

gault. 
Low. 
Curwen. 
Schwertz. 
Schwertz. 
Schwertz. 
Aiton. 
Schwertz. 
Schweitzer. 
Schmalz. 
Burger. 
Thaer. 
Thaer. 
D'Angeville. 
D'Angeville. 



bs. 'lbs. pts. 
880 27.5 2992' 
605 14.3 leiol 
22.0 24921 

" 112841 

33.0 " I 

'• 15994' 

28.6 6580i 

27.2 44951 

27.2.39671 

" 3400' 

" 7066 

" 19313; 

18.fi,2ljS7l 

30.8 3412: 

825 " 12752 

" ! 22.0 12648! 

*■ ;27.5 3004 

1036: " 2992! 

1320, 38.5 4685' 



XI 



Cows in the house. 
Do. 
Do. 

Cows ill fed in winter. 



Do. 
Do. 
Do. 

At grass & in the house. 
In the house, winter. 

Kept in the bouse. 

Well fed. 

Kept in the house. 



Do. 
Well fed. 



At Bechelbronn we have seven cows whose allowance per head 
is 331bs. of hay per diem. The milk is measured night and morn- 

38 



446 MILCH-KINE. 

ing, and the quantity given by each cow is particularly noted. The 
herd consisted of Rail'alea, 8 years old, whose milk failed the 21st of 
April, and reappeared the 18th of June without her having calved ; — 
La Paysanne, 7 years old, whose milk ceased the 21st of February, 
and she calved the 29th of April ; — Prima Donna, 8 years old : milk 
stopped February 19th, calved December 5th ; — Formosa, 9 years 
old ; ceased milking 1st April, calved 2d June ; — La Gitana, 6 years 
old : ceased milking 30th .September, calved 9th November ; — Gala- 
tea, 6 years old : ceased milking 9th July, calved 2d October ; — Belle 
et Bonne, 11| years old : ceased milking the 15th February, calved 
3d April. These seven cows gave in the course of the year, neg- 
lecting fractions, 30576 pints, or 3822 gallons of milk. In the month 
of January, in round numbers, 1870 pints ; in February, 1260 pints ; 
March, 12"60 pints ; April, 1057 pints ; May, 2527 pints ; June, 3726 
pints; July, 4180 pints; August, 3661 j)ints ; September, 2913 
pints ; October, 2622 pints ; November, 2540 pints ; December, 
2360 pints ; having, one with another, given 546 gallons of milk, 
and milked on an average 302'- days each ; the entire herd having 
milked during 2118 days, and the average quantity yielded by each 
cow having been 14.6, say 14^ pints for everyday she was in milk; 
the quantity for each day of the year amounts to about 11.9, say 10 pints. 

June, July, and August are obviously the months most productive 
of milk, during which the cows had scarcely any other food than 
clover. The average quantity for these months was undoubtedly 
raised from three of the cows having calved in March, April, and 
May, so that these were severally giving their largest measures dur- 
ing the three summer months. 

It may be enough to state, that the largest quantity of milk is ob- 
tained in the course of the three first months alter calving ; the pro- 
duce then will amount to 18, 20, and even 24 pints per day, while 
the mean quantity during the m hole time of milking will very little 
exceed 12 pints. 

The observations for the year 1842, which I referred to some 
short way back, showed a mean of 14.6, say 14.' pints of milk for 
each cow. But in the mode of reckoning pursued, there were 
sources of error, which have been avoided in the estimates just 
given. The only mode of securing accuracy of result is to take the 
quantity of milk yielded by each cow between the period of calving 
one year to the same event the following year. This mode of reck- 
oning gives the quantity 13 joints per day for each cow, which I am 
disposed to adopt as the standard for the Swiss breed, fed with 33 
lbs. of good meadow-hay, or an ecjuivalent in wholesome roots, &c. 
I am also disposed to look upon 310 as the mean number of days 
(luring which a cow will give milk after calving. 

We sometimes see quantities of milk mentioned as given by par- 
ticular cows that are truly surprising, and that seem even calculated 
to excite suspicion of the veracity of the reporters. Some have 
spoken of cows that gave 44 and 52i pints of milk a day for several 
months. M. Crud says that cows of great size indeed have even 
given as many as 70.4 pints in twenty-four hours ; and Thaer goes 



MILCH-KINE. 447 

Still further when he states that persons worthy of every credit say 
they have seen cows in first-rate pastures, which, at the height of 
their milking time, produced as many as from 74 to 82^ pints of milk 
in the twenty-four hours. Such a flux of milk can only be very tem- 
porary, and indeed must occur but very rarely. The herdsmen at 
Bechelbronn have often diverted me with tales of such marvels ; 
but since I have accurately gauged the dairy produce of the farm, I 
have met with nothing which would lead me to credit their reality. 
We have had cows indeed which have given 26^, and even 31^ 
pints a day for several weeks ; but these are still very far from the 
quantities which have been mentioned to me. 

Good feeding is undoubtedly required in order that cows may pro- 
duce milk abundantly ; but I believe that the influence of particular 
kinds of forage on the production of milk is often greatly exaggera- 
ted. Each breeder or feeder seems to have his own favorite article, 
however, so that there is nothing like uniformity among them ; with 
one it is the carrot that is in the ascendant ; with another it is the 
beet that is supreme ; there is no root, in fact, which has not alter- 
nately had its apologists and detractors. The truth lies between the 
extremes here as it does in so many other instances ; and I am sat- 
isfied that each and all the roots and other articles of forage that are 
generally introduced into the ration of milch-kine, are calculated to 
produce abundance of good milk ; it is only necessary that the sub- 
stances be allowed in ample quantity, that no mistake be committed 
in regard to the nutritive equivalents of the several articles. I do 
not hesitate to add, that the opinions of the generality of farmers and 
dairymen on the subject are based on observations which are always 
more or less imperfect. 

It is but a few 'years ago that a series of experiments were under- 
taken at Bechelbronn, with a view to ascertain whether the particu- 
lar nature of each of the several articles consumed by milch-kine 
influenced the quantity or chemical constitution of the milk in any 
appreciable manner. The purpose of these inquiries being purely 
practical, — having been undertaken with a special eye to the dairy 
and its produce, the inquiry was confined to the articles that are 
usually given to cows with us. These necessarily vary with the 
season, but I have already said that the dole to each head is equiva- 
lent to 33 lbs. of meadow-hay, which, indeed, always enters in con- 
siderable quantity into the ration, whatever else be given, — unless, 
indeed, the animals are exclusively upon green meat, when, of course, 
the use of every thing else is suspended. In winter the hay is mixed 
with beet, potatoes, turnips, or Jerusalems. In spring the hay is 
gradually replaced by green fodder, which in the first instance isryQ 
cut green, and by and by clover. The experiments which I shall 
now detail were made upon a cow which had calved two hundred 
days, and was again pregnant. 

1st EXPERIMENT. 

200 DAYS AFTER CALVING. 

The cow fed on hay alone gave 65.42 pints of milk in the course 
of seven days, or 9.34 pints per day. This milk consisted of; 



448 MILCH-KINE. 

.3.01 



Caseum 3.0 1 

iu^or;;i{k::;:::;:::.--v.-v.insoiidsi2.4 

Ash of caseum 1 .0 J 

Water -87.7 

100.0 



2d EXPERIMENT. 

207 DAYS AFTER CALVING. 

Fed with turnips and cut straw, (the ration consisting of turnips 

equal to 29.7 lbs., and straw equal to 3.3 lbs. of hay,) the same cow 

gave in the course of eight days 84 4 pints of milk, or 10.5 pints per 

day. The composition of this milk was : 

Caseum 3.0' 

Butter 4.; 

Sugar of milk .^.0 



il 



.,,, J- Solids 12.4 

Ash of caseum 0.'2j 

Water 87.G 



100.0 
The animal discussed her provender with good appetite, but the 
ration was too large ; about 11 lbs. of the turnips being left each day 
unconsumed. 

3d EXPERIMENT. ^ 

215 DAYS AFTER OALVINC. 

The ration here consisted of: 

Fiold-beet, an equivalent for 29.7 lbs. of hay. 
Chopped straw " 3.6 

In the course of fourteen days the quantity of milk obtained 
amounted to 137.6 pints, or 9.8 pints per diem, and was composed 
as below : 

Caseum 3.4 "j 

15u"er ''•**Uolidsl"9 

Milk sugar 5.3 f ''"""^ ^-^ 

Ash of caseum 0.2 J 

Water 87.1 

100.0 
4th EXPERIMENT. 

229 DAYS AFTER CALVING. 

The ration consisted of : 

Raw potatoes equivalent to 29.7 lbs. of hay. 
Chopped straw ." 3.6 " 

In the course of eleven days the cow gave 96.1 pints of milk, or 
at the rate of 8.7 pints per day, the fluid consisting of: 

Caseum 3.4 ■] 

•V.',T ii isolids 13.5 

Milk sugar 5.9 / 

Ash of caseum 0.2 J 

Water W'.S 

10(1.0 
The cow did not do well upon tliis regimen : she became heated, 
and refused one-half the straw. In a general way, we do not give 
tubers to a greater extent than is equivalent to one-half of the allow- 
ance of hay, in which proportion cows do very well upon raw potatoes. 



MILCH-KINE. 449 

5th EXPERIMENT. 

240 DAYS AFTER CALVING. 

The forage here consisted of the full allowance of hay, or 33 lbs. 
In the preceding experiment the milk, which had hitherto kept up to 
from about 9| to 10^ pints a day, fell suddenly to little more than 
8^ pints. To ascertain whether the fall was owing to the potato 
regimen or not, the cow was returned to the ration of hay under 
which in the 1st experiment the daily average of milk was 9.3 pints. 
In the course of thirty days 188 pints of milk were collected, at the 
rate of 6.2 pints per day. The declension in the quantity secreted 
consequently cannot be ascribed to the potatoes which were given 
in the 4th experiment. 

6th EXPERIMENT. 

270 DAYS AFTER CALVING. 

The ration here was raw potatoes, with salt and straw — the ration 
of the fourth experiment, with the addition of about 2| oz. of salt. 
The animal ate this salted ration with appetite ; she also made away 
with the whole of the chopped straw, and it agreed well with her ; 
nevertheless, the milk continued to decrease in quantity ; it had 
fallen off to 5.9, say 6 pints a-day. 

7th EXPERIMENT. 

290 DAYS AFTER CALVING. 

In this trial the ration consisted of Jerusalem potatoes equivalent 
to 33 lbs. of hay, under which the milk may be said to have remain- 
ed stationary, though it was above rather than under the 6 pints per 
diem, as in the 6th experiment. In composition it was as follows : 



Caseum 3.31 

Butter 3.5 [g^y.A^ lo r 

Sugar of milk 5.5 p°"°^ ^-^ 

Ash of caseum 0.2j 

Water 87.5 



lOO.O 

The quantity of the milk had obviously decreased from the first 
down to the two last experiments ; but its chemical constitution 
does not appear to have varied during the entire course of the trials ; 
the varied regimen has had no influence on the proportions in which 
its several ingredients are encountered. But there was still one 
point to be ascertained, viz : whether the milk secreted very shortly 
after the delivery differed from that which was formed at a period 
remote from that epoch. 

8th EXPERIMENT. 

A cow which had calved twenty-four days before, and, upon a 
mixed regimen of hay and green clover, was giving at the rate of 
18.6 pints of milk a-day, was brought under observation. Analysis 
showed this milk to consist of : 

Caseum 3.0 ■) 

Butter 3.5 ( a ,. ,„ ,, „ 

Sugar ofmilk 45 ySohds 11.2 

Ash of caseum 0.2J 

Water ■■88.8 

lOOJO 
38* 



Solids 13.3 



450 MILCH-KINE. 

9th EXPERIMENT. 

35 DAYS AFTER CALVING. 

The same cow, upon green clover, was now producing 21.2 pints 
of milk a-day, and of the following composition : 

Cascum 3.1 

Butter 5.6 

Sugar of milk 4.2 

Ash of caseum ... 0.3 

Water 86.8 

100.0 

This milk evidently presents a larger quantity of butter than ap- 
pears in any of the preceding analyses. But no hasty conclusion 
must be drawn from this ; for the succeeding experiments will ex- 
hibit a change equally sudden in the proportion of the fatty element, 
but in a different way. 

In a second series of experiments I set myself the task of ascer- 
taining whether green fodder had any such remarkable influence on 
the production of milk, and especially of its fatty element, or butter. 

1st EXPERIMENT. 

BEGUN 176 DAYS AFTER THE CALVING. 

The ration here consisted of articles of winter fodder : 

Potatoes equivalent to 16..5 lbs. of hay. 
Hay " 16.5 " 

Upon which the cow had long been kept, though the milk was only 
measured during the last six days. The quantity was 16.3 pints 
a-day, and consisted of : 



Caseum 3.3 

Butter 

Sugar of milk >.i i 

Ash of caseum 0.3 J 

Water 86.5 



3.31 

4.8 I 
5A f 



SoUds 13.5 



100.0 
2d EXPERIMENT. 

182 DAYS AFTER THE CALVING. 

Mi.\ed regimen : Green clover equivalent to 16.5 lbs. of hay. 
Hay " 16.5 " 

Upon which the quantity of milk was at the rate of 17 pints a-day. 
3d EXPERIMENT. 

193 DAYS AFTER THE CALVING. 
Green meat: Clover equivalent to 33 lbs. of hay 
Quantity of milk, 17.2 pints a-day, composed of: 

Caseum 4.0 ■) 

Butler 2.2 I o vj ■•■• n 

Sugar of milk 4.7 \^^'^^ "-^ 

Ash of caseum 0.3 J 

Water 89. 7 

100.0 



MILCH-KINE. 451 

The small quantity of butter here induced me to repeat the analy- 
sis, but the result came out very nearly the same, the quantity being 
still but 2.35 per 100. 

4th EXPERIMENT. 

204 DAYS AFTER THE CALVING. 
Green fodder : same quantity as before. 
Milk per day 13.7 pints, composed of: 

Caseum 3.7 "1 

B*!""/--.:- ^.5!gij^ 2g 

Sugar of milk 5.2 f 

Ash of caseum 0.2 J 

Water 87.4 

100.0 

It would therefore appear that fresh-cut clover has no such virtue 
as that of increasing the quantity of milk given by cows. Under 
the winter fare, in fact, the milk produced in the course of the 
twenty-four hours amounted to 16.7 pints ; under green clover it 
was but 14.9 pints. It would be a great mistake, however, as I 
conceive, to ascribe the diminution here to the use of the green 
forage ; it is due, I apprehend, exclusively to the greater length of 
time that has elapsed since the period of calving. 

The chemical composition of the milk varied little, as I have 
already incidentally remarked, in the course of these experiments. 
The differences in respect of the caseum, by which let me say I 
understand the whole of the azotized constituents, the whole flesh 
of the milk, rarely exceed one-hundredth part. The proportion of 
the fatty element varies suddenly, and, as it seems, independently 
of the various circumstances in which the cows are placed. 

The general inference from these experiments, then, is that the 
nature of the food does not exert any marked influence on the quan- 
tity and chemical constitution of the milk (I do not now speak of 
the quality of the fluid) if the cows but receive the proper nutritive 
equivalents of the several sorts of provender. It is of great impor- 
tance to insist on this point ; for it is quite certain, that if the 
weight of the several rations be not calculated according to that of 
the equivalents, variations in the secretion of milk would be forth- 
with conspicuous ; but then these variations would have the increase 
or diminution of the provender allowed as their cause. 

When cows arc kept through the winter upon straw alone, they 
cease to give milk ; but on the return of green forage, in the spring, 
the secretion is restored. The re-appearance of the milk in this 
case, however, is not connected with the coming in of the fresh 
provender, but with the return of plenty ; the animals are not only 
fed, from having been starved, but they are more than fed ; they 
have something to spare, which their economy turns partly into milk. 

In well-managed establishments, where a good system of hus- 
bandry secures an abundant supply of good nutritive provender to 
the cattle during winter, the produce of the dairy during this season 
differs much less from that of the summer than is generally supposed. 
I am besides persuaded that we estimate the nutritive powers of 



452 FATTENING. 

green forage at too low a rate, and that when cattle are upon wet 
clover or lucern, they are in fact much more effectually nourished 
than under ordinary circumstances. 

If it be true, as it evidently is, that the quantity of milk produced 
depends especially upon the absolute quantity of nutritive food con- 
sumed, it is not so with the quality of the fluid. It is undeniable, 
that the milk of spring and summer, formed upon green and succu- 
lent food, is much more palatable than that of the winter season ; 
the butter is also much finer and better flavored. The green herbs 
of our pastures undoubtedly contain volatile principles which are 
dissipated and lost in the processes of drying and fermentation 
which they undergo in their conversion into hay. If chemistry be 
powerless in seizing such principles, it still informs us of the possi- 
bility of introducing a variety of articles into the food of cows 
which have the property of communicating those qualities which 
we prize in milk. In all grazing countries certain vegetables are 
pointed out as giving, in the vulgar opinion, a particular aroma to 
the flavor of milk. 

^ III. FATTENING OK CATTLE. 

Under a parity of circumstances, feeding cattle for the butcher 
may occasionally be found more advantageous than the dairy to the 
farmer. In feeding for the market there is, in the first place, a 
quicker return for the outlay, than in keeping milch-kine through 
the whole of the year. In the first operation, the capital is realized 
at the end of four or five months ; that which is employed in produ- 
cing milk, and butter, and cheese, is always lying out, like a sum at 
interest. 

The quantity of food requisite to bring cattle intended for the 
butcher into condition, does not vary less than that which is required 
to secure a plentiful production of milk. Thus the stature, the age, 
the race of the individual, and the relative proportions of flesh and 
fat which we would have laid on, all imply varied doles of various 
kinds of forage. The age in especial has to be considered ; for in 
putting up a young animal to fatten, we have both flesh and fat to 
form. This is what always occurs in the fatting of oxen of two 
years old, and of pigs of ten or eleven months. The increase in 
living weight experienced at various ages is not equally owing to 
accumulation of fat ; this indeed may be so in the case of beasts, 
the muscular system of which has already attained complete devel- 
opment, but it is otherwise with young and still growing animals. 

Practice does much in enabling us to select the animals that will 
fatten readily. In a general way it is well to choose young animals 
that have a large chest, the body bulk}' and rounded, the ribs finely 
arched, the bones small, the limbs short, the neck thick for its 
length, the skin soft, pliant, velvety to the touch, and moveable over 
the body, particularly over tlie ribs, the tail should be scanty, the 
buttocks not deeply cleft, but fleshy — well breeched, as the phrase 
runs in some districts. Tiie look of the animal should be sharp 



FATTENING. 453 

and bold ; the horns slender, whitish, and rather transparent. The 
animal must have been cut while he was still at the teat. 

The celebrated English breeder, Robert Bakewell, succeeded, 
after a long and troublesome course of experiments, in creating a 
race of neat-cattle and of sheep which show themselves particularly- 
disposed to take on fat. The fundamental principles established by 
Bakewell, after all his experience, are these : that smallness of 
bone, fineness of skin, and cylindrical shape of body, are the surest 
indications in cattle of the disposition to lay on fat readily, and 
upon the smallest quantity of provender. The most striking features 
in the breed obtained by Bakewell, commonly known as the Dishley 
ireed, may be summed up in the following terms : 

1st. The animal low on his legs. 

2d. 'The back-bone straight. 

3d. The carcass rounded and almost cylindrical. 

4th. The chest deep and large. 

An ox is held to have grown rapidly and well, when at the age of 
three years he weighs from 1016 to 1051 lbs. avoirdupois, from 72 
to 75 stone. The disposition to fatten young is also a precious 
quality in the beast which it is intended to bring up for the butcher ; 
the feeder comes the sooner at his return. Sinclair thinks, that in- 
dependently of good constitution, which is indispensable, this quality 
is derived especially from meekness of disposition, from good tem- 
per ; and as docility is generally the result of good treatment in 
early life, young animals ought always to be treated with great 
gentleness and made perfectly familiar. 

The different races do not all yield meat of the same quality, and 
this quite independently of age. The best meat has a very decided 
and characteristic flavor after it is dressed, which indifferent meat 
wants, or which is replaced by a savor that is disgusting rather 
than agreeable. The fat in the best meat, as well as being laid on 
superficially, is distributed through the substance of the muscles, so 
as to give the flesh a marbled appearance. 

In fattening cattle, it is perhaps of more importance than in gene- 
ral feeding, that the provender should be distributed regularly ; 
plenty of soft litter, and the greatest attention to cleanliness, aid 
materially in fattening. The cow-house ought to be dark and quiet ; 
in a word, all the conditions ought to be combined which conduce 
to sleep, and secure freedom from disturbance of every description. 

The age at which cattle fatten most readily is that of from 7 to 8 
years.* Animals under this age, which have not yet come to their 
full growth, will nevertheless get into excellent condition ; but they 
require both longer time and more food, for the reason, apparently, 
that they are still forming both flesh and fat. 

In fattening during winter, which is done almost exclusively with 
hay in some countries, an ox weighing 748 lbs., upon 40 lbs. of hay 
per diem, will increase by about 2 lbs. daily. According to Mr. 

* This is as in the original, and may be true, but in England and Scotland we have 
seldom an opportunity of proving it so. — Eno. Ed. 



454 THE ox. — FATTENING. 

Low, an ox weighing 770 lbs., and consuming about 3223 lbs. of tup 
nips per week, if he thrive, will gain in the same space of time 
nearly a stone in weight. Admitting that the equivalent number for 
turnips is 076, I find that the ration of hay for this allowance comes 
out 47.8 lbs., having produced exactly 2 lbs. of increase. 

In the information obtained in the Rhenish provinces by M. Moll, 
in regard to the fattening of cattle under the influence of a regimen 
which would give 11 lbs. of hay to every 100 lbs. of dead weight, 
the animal will increase one third in weight in the course of three 
or four months. 

To these general results I add a few particular facts, which are, 
indeed, the only data in rural economy that can ever be received as 
having much value. 

In a series of experiments which he undertook, Mr. Robert 
Stephenson proposed to compare the progress of the increase in 
weight of oxen upon difl^erent alimentary regimens. Starting with 
the principle which we have already established, that animals con- 
sume a quantity of food in proportion to their weight or size, when 
they are under the same conditions, he had of course to divide his 
stock into several lots, each made up of animals of as nearly as pos- 
sible the same weight. Oxen of two years old, brought up on the 
same farm, and kept in the same manner, were the subjects of expe- 
riment. I shall select one experiment, in which the observations 
were made upon three lots of six beasts each. The weight of each 
lot was ascertained before and after the experiment, which was car- 
ried on for 119 days. 

The first lot was put upon white turnips, linseed-oil cake, beans, 
and oats ; and for the last 21 days, each beast had 20 lbs. of pota- 
toes every day in addition. 

The second lot was fed like the first, with this difference, that it 
had no cake, and that during the last 24 days the quantity of pota- 
toes allowed was but 10 lbs. per diem. 

The third lot had no oilier provender than turnips. 

Here are the weights and the nature of the provender consumed 
by the animals during the 110 days, with a column added contain- 
ing the equivalent in hay corresponding with each of the articles 
consumed : 

LOT I. LOT II. LOT III. 

Equivalent Equivalent Equivalent Equivalent 

Provender. Weight in hay Weight in hay Weight in hay assumed, 

ni lbs. in lbs. in ll>s. in lbs. in lbs. in lbs. 

White turnips.. 1518 171.6 1G28 184.8 1122 127 885 

Swedes 13.3.36 1973.4 13384.8 1980 12012 1777.6 C76 

Beans 3.58 1.559.8 358 1559 " " 23 

Oil-cake 389 1768 " " " " 22 

Oats 173 279 173 279 " " 62 

Potatoes 479 151 239.8 77 " " 315 

Ration expressed in hay 5904 3971 1905 

Hay consiuned per day > ^g .^ 3^ 3 jg ^ 

per head J 

Hay per 100 of the liv- i , q3 oq 

ing weight j 4.01 

It therefore plainly appears that the lot which had the largest 



THE OX. FATTENING. 455 

allow ance of provender, the food which contained the greatest quan- 
tity of azotized principles — oi flesh, in fact — produced the largest 
amount of dead weight in a given time, and that the lot which had 
the shortest allowance increased in the smallest measure both in 
flesh and fat — results which might have been readily foreseen. It 
is also apparent, from the table, that in proportion to the nutritive 
value of the articles consumed by each lot, the increase in carcass 
weight was greatest in that which received its allowance in the least 
bulk. Thus reducing the different rations to a standard forage, we 
find that in the first lot, which was most plentifully supplied, 100 of 
hay gave 4.2 of increased weight; while the same allowance of hay 
produced 6 in the third lot, which was fed parsimoniously. This 
fact is most readily explained : over a certain limit, the more food 
an animal receives, the smaller is the fraction which is assimilated 
and turned to use in the body. Breeders have consequently disco- 
vered, that it is by no means generally advantageous to push animals 
beyond a certain point of fatness. The excess of weight which is 
obtained with the assistance of quantities of food, exaggerated as it 
were, no longer compensates for the additional expense incurred. 
This is a circumstance which Mr. Stephenson's experiments also 
illustrate, and indeed they led him to the conclusion which has just 
been stated. Judging by the market price of the several articles of 
provender employed by this distinguished breeder, the first lot 
appears to be that, the fattening of which turned out the least advan- 
tageously : while each pound weight of flesh produced here cost 
about bd., the price of production in the second lot did not much 
exceed 4rf. (4|th ;) in the third it was a little more, (45ths.) 

With these observations of Mr. Stephenson, we find the following 
numbers to express the daily increase in weight of the cattle during 
the period of fattening : 



Average weig^ht of Hfly consumed per day Increase per head Increase per day and 

the oxen before and per head. in 119 days. per head, 
fatleuiiig. 

lbs. lbs. lbs. lbs. 

1st lot ••••.1115 49.7 247.5 2. 

2<1 " 1016 34.3 231.6 1.9 

3d " 794 16. 112.6 0.9 

The weight of the several animals must also be taken into account, 
in seeking to estimate the increase realized upon every 100 lbs. of 
live weight during the fattening. 

In the 1st lot— 100 of live weight in 119 days gained, 22.2 
2d " " 22.8 

3d " " 14.2 

It is seldom that cattle are fattened in the house upon clover or 
lucern in the green state ; nevertheless, animals will fatten upon 
this forage with great rapidity. An ox will eat as much as 1 cwt. 
of clover cut in flower in the course of the day. In case the green 
food should relax the bowels too much, a fraction of the allowance 
may be given dried, and towards Mie end of the fattening a little cake 
may be given. But these additions do not appear to me indispensa- 
ble ; they are always attended with additional cost : and I have 



456 THE ox. FATTENINU. 

frequently seen cows, upon green clover at discretion, acquire a 
remarkable degree of fatness, although they had not ceased to be 
regularly milked. 

In those countries, the nature of whose climate is favorable to 
pasturage, the rearing of cattle presents immense advantages ; but 
the animals can only be fattened in those that are the most fertile. 
The meadow that suffices for the growth and keep of a bullock will 
not always bring the animal into condition for the butcher. Those 
countries where the climate is moist, but long droughts rarely felt, 
where neither the summer heats nor the winter colds are excessive — 
the conditions, in fact, which are met with in the beautiful pasture 
lands of England, in especial — are those that prove most favorable 
to the rearing and feeding of cattle. The pasture lands of Nor- 
mandy and Brittany in France, of Switzerland and Holland, seve- 
ral of the provinces watered by the Rhine, &c., are also remarkable 
for their luxuriant herbage. In such situations and with such ad- 
vantages, the grand object with the farmer is the production and 
fattening of cattle. Whenever it has been possible to lay down 
extensive and productive meadows, it is now beginning to be clearly 
understood that the introduction of even the best system of rotation 
were to make a false application of agricultural science. In my 
opinion, there is no system of rotation, however well conceived and 
carried out, which will stand comparison in point of productiveness 
with a natural meadow, favorably situated and properly attended to. 
The reason of this is obvious, and follows from the very principles 
which we have laid down in treating of rotations. The whole object 
in the best system of husbandry is to make the earth produce the 
largest possible quantity of organic matter in a given time. But in 
such a system we are limited by the climate, inasmuch as we are 
obliged so to arrange matters that our crops shall always attain to 
complete maturity ; the consequence of which is, that with all our 
pains the soil remains unproductive during a certain number of 
weeks and months towards the end of autumn, in the early spring, 
and through the whole of the winter. But upon meadow lands, 
vegetation is incessant ; the winter even does not interrupt it com- 
pletely ; it still revives and makes progress on the bright days ; and 
in the spring it proceeds when the mean temperature is but a few 
degrees above the freezing point of water, and never ceases until it 
is checked again by the severer cold of winter. It is therefore easy 
to obtain conviction that a given surface of meadow land must neces- 
sarily produce a larger quantity of forage than land laid out in any 
other way. It is true that the forage thus obtained will not, like 
the cereal grasses, answer immediately for the support of man ; but 
it nevertheless concurs powerfully in this by producing milk, and 
butter, and cheese, and in breeding and fattening cattle : let there 
be added to all these advantages of what may be called a permanent 
vegetation, that the cost of keeping it in order is infinitely less, and 
that there is no risk to be run from failures of crops, and the vast 
advantages of meadow or pasture land will meet us with all their 
force. 



THE OX. FATTENING. 457 

On the banks of the Elbe, in Holland, in the neighborhood of 
Arnheiin, the meadows are depastured during one year, and cut, 
and their produce made into hay the following year, and so on alter- 
nately. The cattle are fed in the house with the hay during the 
winter. They are driven out into the pastures in May. In the Low 
Countries, it has been found that to fatten a large ox a surface of 
meadow" land of about 9960 square yards, upon which he will pas- 
ture during five or six months, was necessary. In the bottoms of 
greatest fertility near Dusseldorf, it has been calculated that to keep 
a cow an extent of surface equal to about 1800 square yards was ne- 
cessary. 

In countries which possess rich pasture lands, oxen are put to fat- 
ten immediately upon the richest of them. In the valley of the 
Auge, in Normandy, these meadows are designated as herbages. A 
meadow of this kind requires a rich, damp soil, capable of retaining 
moisture. It is, therefore, to a considerable extent dependent upon 
its subsoil. In the district mentioned, the soil of the pastures con- 
sists of a thick layer of vegetable mould resting upon clay ; it is 
therefore very rare that this meadow land feels the effect of drought ; 
it is, indeed, only in the early spring that the pasture upon such 
lands sometimes fails, in which case the stock must of course be as- 
sisted with hay, the quantity being gradually diminished as the sea- 
son advances. 

M. Dubois finds that a lean ox weighing 473 lbs., after fattening 
in the valley of the Auge, will weigh 763 lbs., so that he will have 
gained 290 lb.';. ; the degree of fatness attained in this district is often 
])rodigious. M. Dubois mentions oxen which weighed when fat 1760 
lbs., upwards of 125 stone, and he speaks of one which attained the 
enormous weight of 2750 lbs., upwards of 196 stone. 

The height of the oxen fattened in the herbages of the Auge va- 
ries from 4 ft. 7 in. to 5 ft. 3 in. measured at the haunch ; when 
thoroughlv fat, the four quarters will weigh from 550 lbs. to 990 lbs., 
the hide will weigh from 70 lbs. to 116 lbs., and they will yield from 
100 lbs. to 150 lbs. of tallow. 

It is calculated that on the meadows of the greatest fertility, a 
surface of 2760 square yards are required to fatten a large ox ; on 
meadows of medium fertility, a surface of 4680 square yards are re- 
quired to fatten an ox of medium size ; on those of the third quality, 
a surface of 3720 square yards is deemed necessary to fatten a 
small ox. 

M. Dubois calculates the quantity of green fodder consumed by 
an ox during the eight months when he is fattening, as equivalent to 
6600 lbs. in dry hay ; this, at least, is the quantity that the extent of 
meadow required to fatten one ox would produce. The average 
ration of green forage per diem is, therefore, equivalent to about 27 
lbs. of hay, a quantity which appears small, and which would be so 
in effect, were not the oxen kept so long in the meadows. M. Du- 
bois, indeed, observes that in the stall, with a ration composed of 
from 11 lbs. to 13 lbs. of linseed oil-cake and 26 lbs. of hay, an ox 
■will become sufficiently fat for the butcher in seventy days, ai 

39 



458 THE ox. FATTENING. 

acquire nearly the same weight that he would have gained in the 
course of seven or eight months in the meadows. There is nothing 
surprising in this fact, inasmuch as the ration mentioned hy M. Du- 
bois, in our mode of viewing it, is equivalent in nutritive value to at 
least 81 lbs. weight of hay ; the quantity of oil-cake alone is enough 
to supply a good pound weight of fat per diem. 

In old Friesland, where the pastures are excellent, results are ob- 
tained which may be compared with those of the meadows in the 
valley of the Auge ; an ox of from 770 lbs. to 990 lbs. weight will 
be pushed to a weight of from 1100 lbs. or 1G50 lbs. on a surface 
of meadow land between 3000 and 3600 square yards in extent. 

In the meadows of the Auge the fattening goes on even during the 
winter; the oxen are received into the pastures between tlie 15th 
of September and the 15th of November, and the animals pass the 
winter in the open field ; but they receive from 12 lbs. to 26 lbs. of 
hay per diem until the month of April, when the grass has already 
grown sufficiently to suffice for their keep. These oxen are gener- 
ally fat and ready for market in July. 

In these observations of M. Dubois, the fattening has reference to 
the neat weight of the carcass, sinking the oftlil, as it is said, or esti- 
mating the weight by the quarter. The most esteemed quarters are 
the hind quarters, which are found to weigh rather less than the fore 
quarters, although the difference is less, the higher the condition of 
the animal. 

It is long since various means have been devised for ascertaining 
the neat weight of a living animal, or in other words, the weight 
which the carcass will have when it has been embowelled, flayed, 
and the head and fat cut off. These various parts compose what is 
called the offal. It is readily to be conceived that one grand feature 
in the excellence of an ox nmst consist in the great relative weight 
of the carcass properly so called in comparison with the offal ; but 
it may easily be imagined also that the relations in the weight of 
these two different portions of the living animal will vary according 
to the state of fatness, and also according to the breed and the age 
of the beast. 

Mr. Anderdon has found that an ox which is not absolutely lean 
will give for every 100 lbs. of his absolute weight : 

Of marketable meat. 53.5 lbs. 

An ox somewhat fatter will yield 55 " 

And one completely fat as many as G2.2 " 

Mr. Layton Coke's estimate is : 

For a lean ox 60 per cent, of marketable meat. 

Furan ox in middling condition. .GS " 

And for a fat ox 73 " 

These estimates appear to me exaggerated, and I much doubt from 
the sales of cattle wliich we make ourselves, whether they would 
readily be admitted by the buyers ; they are in fact too high as re- 
gards the available meat. 

From a great number of actual trials made with animals of about 
two years old, and which were all as nearly as possible in the same 



THE OX. FATTENING. 459 

condition, Mr. Stephenson was enabled to determine with great ac- 
curacy the actual weight of the butcher's meat in contrast with the 
entire weight of the animal. Mr. Stephenson comes to the follow- 
ing conclusions : 

Butcher's meat per cent 57.7 

Tallow 8.0 

The hide 5.5 

The entrails and offal 28.8 

100.0 
The precise quantities of marketable meat and of offal have also 
been determined by Mr. Mallo in an ox of the Durham breed which 
was slaughtered in his presence. The weight of the animal on its 
feet was 1496 lbs. 

Per cenla^e of 
lbs. live weight. 

The two fore quarters weighed 405.9 ) rrA 

The two hind " 42:{.5 ( ■*^* 

The skin C2.7 4.2 

The tallow 112.0 7.5 

The blood 1 10.0 7.4 

The head, fat, and entrails 381.7 25.5 

1496.0 100.0 
These relations as to meat, tallow, and skin agree in a very con- 
siderable measure with the estimates of Mr. Stephenson. 

Sir John Sinclair gives the following numbers as the results ob- 
tained in connection with an ox of the Devonshire breed, slaughtered 
at the age of 3 years and 10 months. 

Weight of the living animal, 1549.6 lbs. 

Per centagre of 
lbs. the live weigiit. 

Butcher's meat, the four quarters 1083.5 70.0 

Theskin 84.9 5.5 

Tallow 143.2 9.2 . 

Entrails and blood 103.6 10.5 

Head and tongue. 36.7 2.4 

Feet 17.1 1.4 

Heart, liver, and lungs 20.4 1.3 

1549.4 100.0 

The animal here was not in prime condition. On the whole, the 
relations as stated by Mr. Stephenson may be taken as those that 
will be found nearest the average truth, and as his numbers are de- 
duced from numerous actual experiments, I feel disposed to adopt 
them. M. Dubois has found that an ox which will weigh 473 lbs., 
sinking the offal, will be brought by fattening to the weight of 763 
lbs. We have, therefore, for the weight of an animal as it stands : 

Before fattening 828 lbs. 

After fattening 1336 

Gain in weight 508 

The fattening having been effected in eight months, the absolute 
increase in weight per diem will amount to 2 lbs.; the increase per 
cent, upon the weight is 61.4. 

We have seen that during the fattening, the mean consumption, 
reckoning the provender in hay, amounts to 6600 lbs.; the increase 
obtained being 508 lbs. gives 16.9 lbs. of living solid for every 220 



460 THE HORSE. 

lbs. of hay consumed. Lastly, the mean ration being settled by M. 
Dubois at 26.4 lbs. of hay per head and per diem, and the weight of 
the animal on being taken into the meadow being 828.3 lbs , this ra- 
tion corresponds to 7.1 lbs. of hay for every 220 lbs. weight of the 
living animal. 

To sum up from the fact just stated on the subject of fattening, it 
appears that the increase per day is : 

According to Thaer 0.93 per cent, on the hay consumed. 

Low O.'ll 

" Stephenson, 1st lot 0.94 " 

2d 20.99 

" " :W 0.45 " 

Dubois 0.95 

^ IV. OF HORSES. 

In what follows I shall limit myself to the consideration of the 
horse in his relation to agricultural industry, and shall give the re- 
sult of certain experiments which I have made upon his growth with 
a view of solving the question, much disputed in various places at 
the present time, whether or not the general farmer can breed horses 
with advantage to himself. 

The horse employed in farm labor ought to be spirited and strong ; 
attention to external form is only to be given in so far as it is an 
indication of the qualities that are required. He ought therefore to 
be broad in the cliest and in the haunches, and his muscular system 
must in general be decidedly developed. A horse of considerable 
size, if he be otherwise exempt from defects, is generally preferable 
to a small animal ; he is stronger, takes longer steps, and does more 
for his keep than the other. We are not to require in the draught- 
horse the vivacity and amount of spirit which we look for in the 
saddle horse, yet he ought to have that liveliness which is almost 
always a sign of health in animals. 

Thaer does not approve of the practice commonly followed at this 
time of mixing with good draught horses the blood of stallions of 
elegant shape, l)ut little adapted to stand hard work. Although this 
remark is not without trulii, it is still impossible to deny that in many 
cases the employment of stallions of some breeding has much im- 
proved the race ol" draught-horses in various districts. It is not, 
besides, unworthy of attention, tliat it is really important for the 
farmer to have a breed which he can readily dispose of to advantage., 
particularly in those countries where horses for cavalry and artillery 
service are in request. My own observations would lead me to say, 
that the breeds in France are frequently improved by crossing with 
stallions of the royal studs. Tiie ell'ect from this procedure has not 
perhaps been so great as might reasonably have been expected, still 
evident progress has been made. 

The mare will take the stallion at about the age of three years ; but 
it is seldom that the animal is covered at so early an age ; on the 
farm she will be at least live or six years of age before this is allow- 
ed, especially if the animal is to be worked during the time she is 
vrith foal ; and the same consideration leads us to say, that a mare 



THE HORSE. 461 

ought not to be covered oftener than once in two years, although it 
is very possible to have a foal from her every year, for she frequent- 
ly comes into season towards the 11th day after foaling, and she 
goes with young for a term which varies between 333 and 346 days. 

A brood mare may be employed in ordinary work during the first 
period of her pregnancy ; but when the time is further advanced, 
when she is in the tenth month, for example, every possible precau- 
tion must be taken against accident. This is the period at which 
we withdraw our brood mares from the common stable, and put them 
into separate boxes. After she has foaled, the mare receives in 
small quantities and frequently repeated, warm drinks and bran 
mashes. While she is giving suck, her food ought to be of a more 
substantial or better kind than that which is generally allowed. 

The mare may be put to light work twenty days after she has 
foaled ; but it is requisite not to demand any thing like exertion from 
her within eight or ten weeks after this event ; she then goes out 
accompanied by her foal, which is generally suckled for about one 
nundred days. Foals are frequently brought up in the stable or in 
the loose box ; this is our practice in Alsace ; but it is well, with a 
view to the growth and health of the young animal, that it be taken 
out every day. On quitting the teat, foals are fed upon choice hay ; 
in the course of the second year a portion of the hay should be re- 
placed by an allowance of oats, and in the season the use of green 
clover cannot be too highly recommended. 

According to Thaer, the daily allowance to a horse of middling 
height, and doing ordinary work, may be regarded as good when it 
consists of: 

Hay 8.2 lbs. = Hay 8.2 lbs 

Oats 9.2 = Ditto 14.2 

Allowance reckoned in hay 22.4 

In England the following allowance has been particularly men- 
tioned as that of certain well-conducted stables. 

Cut hay 11.0 lbs. = Hay 11.0 lbs. 

Cut straw 2.2 = Ditto 0.55 

.- Oats 11.0 = Ditto 16.9 

Beans 1.1 = Ditto 4.7 

Allowance reckoned in hay 33.2 

According to M. Tassey, veterinary surgeon in the Municipal 
Guard of Paris, the provender of the horses in this corps in 1840 
consisted of: 

Hay 11 lbs. = Hay 11 lbs. 

Oats 8 = Ditto 12 

Straw for litter 11 = Ditto 2V 

Total allowance 25 

The same authority reckons that horses employed in severe 
draught receive or require : 

Hay I,. . 164 lbs. = Hay 16i lbs. 

Oate 17 = Ditto 26 

Total allowance 421 

39* 



462 THE HORSE. 

Until very lately (previously to 1810) the allowance of troop 
horses in the French army consisted for the reserve cavalry of: 

Hay 11 lbs. = Hay 11 lbs. 

Oats 8 = Ditto 12 

Straw 11 = Ditto 2* 

Total allowance 25 J 

For the cavalry of the line : 

Hay S.aibs.^Hay 8.8 lbs. 

Oats 7.5 = Ditto 11.5 

Straw n. = Ditto 2.7 

Total allowance 23.0 

For the light cavalry : 

Hay 8.8 1bs.= Hay 8.8 lbs. 

Oats 6.6 = Ditto. 10.1 

Straw 11. = Ditto 2.7 

Total allowance 21.6 

Influenced by the consideration of the frequent indifl^erent quality 
of hay, and its injurious elfect upon the health of the horse, it was 
decided in 1841 to replace a portion of the hay ration by a larger 
quantity of oats, an article much less liable to be adulterated, or to 
be indifferent in quality. The allowance now consisted for the re- 
serve cavalry of : 

lbs. lbs. 

Hay 8.8= Hay 8.8 

Oats 9.2 = Ditto 14.2 

Straw 11 = Ditto 2.7 

Total allowance 23.7 

For the cavalry of the line : 

lbs. lbs. 

Hiiy 0.0 = Hay 6.6 

Oats 8.8 = Ditto 13.5 

Straw 11 — Ditto 2.7 



Total allowance 22.8 

For the light cavalry : 

lbs. lbs. 

Hay 6.6 = Hay 6.6 

Oats 8.3 = Ditto 12.8 

Straw 11 = Ditto 2.7 

Total allowance. 22.1 

From what precedes, it appears that the substitution of oats for 
hay was made upon a calculation whicli squares well with the theo- 
retical inferences in regard to the relative nutritive powers of these 
two articles. 

The allowance to the horse ought to be distril)utod into three por- 
tions, constituting as many meals, and put iioforc him in the morning 
before going to work, in the middle uf the day, and in the evening ; 
he is generally wai(M-ed at meal times. It is also highly advantage- 
ous to the health of the hor.sc tluit he he made to work witii a cer- 
tain regularity. Our horses at Becliellironii, upon an allowance 
equivalent to 33 lbs. of hay, work from 8 to 10 hours a day, having 
an hour's rest at midday. 



THE HORSE. 



463 



There is, of course, a certain relation between the height, or, if 
you will, the weight of the horse, and the quantity of provender he 
requires. Some attention, as we have seen, has been given to this 
point, in connection with horned cattle ; but with reference to the 
horse I know of no data but such as I myself possess. Seventeen 
horses and mares, aged from 5 to 12 years, and having each proven- 
der equivalent to 33 lbs. of meadow hay, weighed together 18,190 
lbs. The mean weight of each horse being represented by the num- 
ber 1070 lbs., we perceive that for every 100 lbs. of live weight, 
6.7 lbs. of meadow-hay are required for the daily ration, the horses 
working from 8 to 10 hours a day. This relation differs very little 
from that which we have obtained in reference to cattle. 

I was anxious to ascertain the rate of growth of the horse ; and 
in connection with our breed, which have a mean weight of about 
1100 lbs., I found that the foals weighed as follows : 











Ul 






^ 




J3 




60 

C 

a 


c 
'3 




■^ 3 

•s-g 


.2f 


Names. 


3 






& 








O 










©■s 






S 

as 
P 


en 


o 


1 


1 




1" 






lbs. 




lbs. 


days. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


Filly of Chevrcuil 


25 May, 1842 


110 


20 Aug. 1842 


294.8 


87 


184.8 


2.1 


Filly of Hechier 


12 June, 1842 


113 


7 Sept. 1842 


286. 


87 


172. 


1.9 


Filly of BruneUe 


12 June, 1842 


113 


7 Sept. 1842 


354. 


87 


241. 


2.7 



The mean increase per day during the period of suckling in the 
three cases quoted above, therefore, appears to have been rather 
more than 2 and ^ths lbs. avoirdupois. 

Immediately after weaning, young horses appear to experience an 
arrest of their growth for some short time, an event which indeed 
happens to animals generally. I found, for example, that Chev- 
reuil's filly, which on the day of weaning weighed 294 lbs., nine 
days afterwards weighed but 288#Jbs., and had consequently lost 
6 lbs. 

I shall add a few weighings of horses further advanced in age, 
although still young : 

Alexander, a colt, weighed at birth 110 lbs. ; at the age of 128 
days, 337 lbs. ; increase 227 lbs., or about 1.8 per diem: 51 days 
afterwards, 490 lbs. ; increase 105 lbs., or per day 1.4 lb. 

Finette, a filly, weighed, when weaned at the age of 86 days, 295 
lbs. ; 83 days afterwards, 396 lb.s. : increase 101 lbs. ; per day, 
1.1 lb. 

Hechler's filly weighed, when weaned at the age of 87 days, 286 
lbs. ; 65 days afterwards, 358 lbs. : increase 72 lbs., or per day 1.10 
lb. 

From what precedes we may conclude : 



464 THE HOG. 

1st. That foals, the issue of mares weighing from 960 to 1100 
lbs., weigh at birth about 112 lbs. 

2d. That during suckling for three months, the weight increases 
in the relation of 278 to 100, and tluit the increase corresponds very 
nearly to 2 and -f/f lbs. avoirdupois for each individual per diem. 

3d. That the increase of weight per diem of foals, from the end 
of the first to the end of the second year, is about Ij^'^ lbs. avoirdu- 
pois ; and that towards the third year, the increase per day falls 
something under 1 lb. avoirdupois. After three years complete, the 

Seriod at which the horse has very nearly attained his growth and 
evelopment, any increase becomes less and less perceptible. These 
conclusions in regard to the horse, differ very little from those 
which I have had occasion to draw in connection with horned cattle. 
I have also made a few experiments with reference to the quantity 
of provender consumed by foals in full growth, and have found that 
Alexander, Finette, and Hechler's filly, weighing together 1106 
lbs., consume per day : 

Hay 19.8 = Hay 19.8 

Oats 7 = Ditto n 

Total allowance 30.8 

Per head 10.22 

The mean weight of these foals was 368.6 lbs., so that the hay 
consumed for every hundred pounds of live weight was 2.85 lbs., 
with which allowance the daily increase amounted to about 1.2 lb. 
Consequently, a mixed provender, equivalent to 100 lbs. of hay, had 
produced 12 lbs. of live weight. I must confess that this result 
appears to be somewhat too favorable, but I can only set down the 
numbers as they presented themselves to me. 

The flesh of the horse is not generally used, or at least openly 
used, as food for man, though there are countries in which it is ex- 
posed for sale and commonly eaten. At Paris, indeed, in times of 
scarcity, horse-flesh has been consumed in quantity. During the 
Revolution, a knacker exposed publicly for sale, in the Place de 
Gr^ve, joints from the horses which he had killed, and the sale 
continued for three years without any ill effect; in 1811, a scarcity 
obliged the Parisians to have recourse to the same kind of food, 
and it is said, indeed, that the traffic in horse-flesh as an article of 
human sustenance is still continued to a very considerable extent in 
the French metropolis ; at the present moment, a distinguished 
writer on Medical Police, M. Parent-Duchatelet, has even proposed 
to legalize the sale of horse-flesh as food for man. 

^ V. OF HOGS. 

There is perhaps no farming establishment which does not keep 
a certain number of hogs, a measure by which offal of all kinds that 
would go directly to the dunghill, is turned to the very best account. 
The dairy, the kitchen-garden, and the kitchen, all yield their con- 
tingent of food to the pig-stye, which is moreover an excellent 
means of using up certain portions of the harvest. But the rearing 



THE hoc;. 465 

and fattening of hogs, although frequently looked upon as matters 
of course, and requiring very little care, do in fact demand consider- 
able attention and certain conveniences in situation. The rearing 
of hogs, in a general way, may be said to suit the small farmer 
better than the great agriculturist. 

Our common domestic hog appears to derive his origin from the 
common wild hog of Europe. The breeds are extremely numerous. 
The black hog, covered with rather fine hair, and commonly found 
in Spain, is a native of Africa. This is the race which has been 
carried to South America, where it has multiplied in a truly surpri- 
sing manner. It grows rapidly ; and if it has little to recommend 
it with reference to fattening, it is nowise nice in the matter of food 
and general entertainment ; the flesh is excellent when the animal 
has been kept upon the banana, and fattened off upon Indian corn. 

The hogs of the east of Europe are remarkable for their size ; 
they are of a deep gray color, and have very long ears ; they are 
not ver)' prolific, the brood swine having rarely more than four or 
five at a birth. The Westphalian breed, on the contrary, though 
they resemble the last, are highly prolific, the litter generally con- 
sisting of from ten to twelve. In Bavaria the hogs are remarkable 
for the smallness of their bones and the readiness with which they 
take on fat. Lastly, the Chinese race, which is common in England, 
and begins to extend on the continent, differs from those hitherto 
known, in having the back straight or even hollow, and the belly 
large. This breed is also remarkable for its quietness ; the pork 
which it yields is of the very best quality. 

One of the great advantages connected with the hog being its 
extreme fecundity, it is important to have a breed which is distin- 
guished in this respect. There are some brood swine which have 
regularly borne ten to fifteen, and even eighteen pigs at a litter ; a 
more general number is eight or nine. 

According to Thaer, the hog that is disposed to take on fat is 
distinguished by length of body, long ears, and a pendulous belly. 
The hog attains his growth at the end of about a year, until which 
time the female ought not to be put to the boar. One boar generally 
suffices for about ten females. 

The hog, as all the world knows, is an animal the least dainty in 
his food ; he is omnivorous, nothing comes amiss to him ; but his 
food is by no means matter of indifference when tlie quality of the 
flesh comes to be considered. Thaer seems to think that maize is 
of all articles that which is the best for feeding swine ; and I have 
had occasion to verify the accuracy of his conclusion in South 
America, where I may add it is found that the oily fruit of the palm- 
tree contributes powerfully to the fattening. 

Husbandry, in regard to the hog, comprises two distinct periods : 
the growth of the animal, and his fattening. It is generally admit- 
ted that it is most advantageous not to fatten swine for the butcher 
until they have completed or nearly completed their growth. A 
hog which lias been well kept from the period of its birth, may be 
put up to fatten at the age of about a year. The female shows signs 



j466 the hog 

of heat at the age of about five or six months, and goes with young 
on an average 115 days, and will produce regularly two litters per 
annum ; when particularly well kept, she may have three litters in 
the course of from thirteen to fourteen months. 

The hogs which are destined to be fattened for the knife are ge- 
nerally cut at the age of six weeks, particularly if they are to be 
put up to fatten at the age of nine or ten months, as is often done. 
Almost all the varieties of roots and grain produced upon the farm 
are suitable for the maintenance of the hog ; but in Alsace, and I 
believe generally, the staple is the steamed potato, with which are 
associated various articles in smaller quantity, such as peas, and 
barley and rye meal, &c. 

The farrow sow ought to have food by so much the more abun- 
dant and nutritious as she is required to suckle a larger number of 
pigs. Our allowance at Bechelbronn to the hog with five young 
ones during the six weeks of suckling is as follows : 

lbs. lbs. 

Steamed potatoes 24.75 =hay 7.8 

Rye meal 2.45= " 4.0 

Skimniilk 13.2 = " 6.2 

Total allowance 18.0 

After the fifth week, M'hen the animal is no longer giving suck, 
the ration consists of: 

lbs. lbs. 

Steamed potatoes 12.1 = hay 7.3 

Rye ineal 1.0= " l.fi 

Skim milk (sour) 6.5=: " 3.3 

Total allowance 12.2 

This allowance is gradually reduced to the end of the second 

month after the farrowing, when the animal is upon the maintenance 

ration of the farm, consisting of: 

Il)s. lbs. 
Stc'tmed potatoes 16.5 = hay 5.2 

The potatoes are mixed with dish washings, which certainly con- 
tribute to improve their nutritive power, although I am altogether at 
a loss to estimate the value of the article. 

The young pigs begin to taste the food given to the mother at the 
age of about a fortnight, but they never take to this kind of food 
freely until they are four or five weeks old and are weaned ; up to 
this time they have an allowance of skim milk and whey. To five 
pigs at the time of weaning we allowed per day : 

lbs. 

Steamed potatoes 22.0 = hay 7.3 per head 1.4 

Rye meal 1.0= " 1.0 " 0.33 

Skimniilk 0.6= " 2.8 " 0.57 

2i».6 11.7 

This allowance was modified by degrees ; the quantities of milk 
and rye meal were gradually abridged, and the proportion of pota- 
toes increased, so that about the third month tiie allowance per head 
was from 11 to 13 lbs. of potatoes mixed witii greasy water. This 



THE HOG. 467 

is the regimen, equivalent to about 5 lbs. of hay, upon which our 
store pigs are maintained until they are put up to fatten. During 
the three months which follow the weaning, therefore, we may 
reckon that each animal has consumed 3.8 lbs. of meadow-hay per 
day, and that from the third month the consumption may be repre- 
sented by 5.2 lbs. of the same article. 

We have attempted in vain to replace the potato by rape or madia 
oil-cake ; the pigs refused it obstinately ; but they showed no 
objection to poppy seed, walnut and linseed cake ; during the season 
they will also eat clover, and are partly maintained upon this plant. 
In summer they are put entirely upon green meat, animals from five 
to six months old consuming about 19 lbs. of clover a-day, a quantity 
which represents very nearly 5 lbs. of clover hay. 

The hog may be fattened at any age ; but as we have already said, 
it is not generally advisable to fatten before he is ten months or a 
year, some say fifteen months or a year and a half old, at which 
period the animal is undoubtedly in flesh and at its full growth. The 
other extreme limit appears to be about five years ; but it is only a 
brood sow that is ever kept to five years of age. It is generally 
allowed that twelve weeks are required to bring a hog into prime 
condition, when he ought to have a layer of fat under the skin up- 
wards of an inch in thickness. Sixteen weeks may be required to 
obtain an animal really fat ; and twenty weeks to have him at the 
highest point that is attainable. The hog requires to be fed regu- 
larly. After weaning, pigs should have five or six meals in the 
course of the day ; the number of meals is diminished gradually, 
and towards the end of two months they amount to but three in all. 

I was curious to ascertain the weight of pigs at the moment of 
their birth, so as to determine their rate of increase during the period 
of suckling. On the 5th of September a sow farrowed a litter of 
five. 

lbs. 
No. 1 weighed 2.205 
No. 2 " 3.025 
No. 3 " 2.476 
No. 4 " 2.750 
No. 5 " 3.300 

Weight of the litter 13.756 

Average weight per head . .2.751 

On the 11th of October the weight of the litter was 86.9 lbs., or 
17.3 lbs. per head : increase in thirty-six days, 73.2 lbs. ; per head, 
14.6 lbs. ; per day, 0.409 lbs. On the 15th of November the weight 
was 177 lbs. : increase in thirty-five days, 90.2 lbs. ; per head, 18 
lbs. ; per day, 0.506. During the thirty-six days of suckling, con- 
sequently, 100 of live weight at birth had become 032. 

In another instance, I found that eight pigs which at the time of 
weaning weighed 114 lbs., or 14.3 lbs. per head, at a year old 
weighed 1320 lbs., or 165 lbs. per head : increase in eleven months 
1206 lbs., or 150 lbs. per head. 

The increase per diem since the weaning had been 0.4, — not quite 



468 THE HOG. 

half a pound ; and as the food consumed may be represented by 5.2 
lbs. of hay per day and per head, it will follow that 100 of forage 
ha,d produced 8.58 of live weight. This ratio is too high, however ; 
for these pigs besides the regular allowance had whey and various 
scraps of which no account was kept ; and we know that whey 
alone contains a considerable quantity of the representatives both 
of flesh and fat. 

Baxter came to some interesting conclusions on the growth and 
fattening of young hogs. Four animals each of the age of nine 
months weighed at the beginning of the experiment 458.2 lbs. ; 
twenty-one days afterwards, 620.8 lbs. : increase of weight 162.6 
lbs., to obtain which there were consumed : 

lbs. lbs. 

Barley 1.51 equivalent to hay, 250 

Beans 140.8 " CIl 

Maltgrajns 440 " 257 

1239 

So that a quantity of nutritive matter represented by 100 lbs. of 
hay produced 13.21 lbs. of live weight. 

Assuming the weight of each pig of nine months old before the 
fatting to have been 29 lbs., the increase per head was 40.6 lbs. in 
the course of twenty-one days, or at the rate of 1.9 lbs. each. Bax- 
ter reckoned the carcass weight, sinking ofTal, at 7.4 per cent. 

One of the pigs between nine and ten months old weighing 159.3 
lbs., at the end of twenty days weighed 198.8 lbs. : Increase in 
twenty days, 39.3 lbs. ; increase per day, 1.9 lbs. During these 
twenty days, the animal had consumed 188 lbs. of barley, equivalent 
to 314 lbs. of hay. The increase would consequently give for every 
100 lbs. of hay consumed an increase of live weight of 12.52, say 
12^ lbs. 

Arthur Young by keeping pigs of a year old on peas-meal obtain- 
ed the following results : 

No. 1 weighed 99.0; 35 days afterwards, 157.5; gain, 58.5; per day 1.672 
No. 2 " 91.7; 42 " 145.4; " 53.7 " 1.876 

No. 3 " 86.6; C3 " 139.4; " 52.8 " 0.836 

I shall here give two series of observations made at Bechelbronn 
on the fattening of hogs. September 6th, 1841, seven hogs, aged 
fifteen months each, already in good condition, were put up to fatten. 
They had hitherto had the usual hog's food — sour milk and boiled 
potatoes after weaning; by and by from 11 to 15 lbs. of potatoes, 
whey, and dish wasiiings. The seven porkers weighed 1691.8 lbs. ; 
or 241.670 lbs. each. The increase had been at the rate of 0.528, 
rather better than half a pound per day and per head, supposing thein 
to have weighed 13.7 lbs. each, at the time of weaning. 

lbs. 

After fattening, 20lli Deceiiilicr, the 7 swine weighed 2101.0 
Before " 6th September " 169.8 

Increase in 104 days, 409.2 lbs. ; or per head 58.3 

Increase per day and per head 0.572 



THE HOG. 



469 



In the course of the 104 days, there were consumed : 

lbs. lbs. 

Barley 772 equivalent to hay 1144 

Peas 1042.8 " 4171 

Potatoes 9504 " 8296 

Greasy water and whey — quantity not determined 8333.G 

►So that with the provender equivalent to 100 lbs. of hay 4.91 lbs. of 
live weight had been produced. • 

These seven porkers, slaughtered, yielded : 











Weight of 


Weight of 


Hogs. 


Weight 


Weight after 


Weight of 


the porkers 


heads and 




alive. 


bleeding. 


the blood. 


without 
heads or feet. 


offal. 




lbs. 


lbs. 


ll)S. 


lbs. 


1 
lbs. 


1 


3-23.0 


312 


n 


208.0 


44.0 


2 


259.0 


248 


11 


208.4 


39.6 


3 


283.0 


272 


Ji 


208.2 


63.8 


4 


316.0 


305 


11 


2(53.2 


41.8 


5 


264 


257.4 


6-6 


220.0 


37.4 


6 


259.6 


250.8 


8.8 


213.4 


37.4 


7 


393.8 


376.2 


17.6 


321.2 


55.0 


2098.6 


" 


" 


1702.6 


" 



It must be admitted that these animals had increased both in flesh 
and in fat ; but in spite of this, the experiment appears to be un- 
favorable to the opinion that fat in animals is the effect of direct as- 
similation of the siftstance. The whole increase of weight in the 
seven porkers had been 409.2 lbs. ; supposing 27 per cent, of fat in 
this increase, its amount must have been 110.4 lbs. in all ; but the 
food consumed did not contain more than 57.4 lbs. It would there- 
fore be necessary to admit that the food which had not been taken 
into the account had contained as many as 53.0 lbs. of fatty matter, 
which I own does not appear to me probable. But no definitive 
conclusion can be drawn from the circumstance, owing to the actual 
state of fatness of the animals, when they were specially put up to 
fatten, not having been ascertained ; perhaps the absolute quantity 
of fat already accumulated is greater at this time than is generally 
supposed. 

I find, for instance, that a young porker of 196.9 lbs., killed at 
the time when he might have been put up to fatten specially, yielded 
as many as 26.3 per cent, of fat. 

The following are the data afforded by the fattening of the farm 
porkers for 1842 : 

Nine porkers, from thirteen to fifteen months old, and already in 
good condition, were put upon the full fatting allowance on the 1st 
of October, on which day they weighed : 

lbs. 
1940 
Nov. 28lh, .after having been bled, they weighed 2307.8 



Increase in 58 days per head and per day 
40 



.38.2 



470 



THE HOG. 



In the course of fifty-eight days the hogs had consumed : 

lbs. lbs. 

Rye. 770 equivalent to hay 1141.8 

Peas i:JOi " 5209 

Potatoes 4796 " 1861 

Greasy water ami whey undetermined 8221.8 

The nine animals gave 1746.8 lbs. of meat, fat and lean, or 75.7 
per cent, of tiieir weight as they stood alive ; besides which, 141.9, 
say 142 lbs. of lard were obtained from the internal parts. Now 
supposing that in the increase of weight obtained in the course of 
fifty-eight days, the fat were to be represented by 29 per cenL, the 
fat fixed would amount to 100.1 lbs. ; while the whole of the fatty 
substances contained in the food consumed would not amount to more 
than 59.6 lbs. It would therefore be imperative on us, did we main- 
tain that all the fat was obtained ready formed from without, to sup- 
pose that the whey and dish washings administered in indeterminate 
fjuantity, had introduced 40.5 lbs. of fat into the bodies of the animals. 
Some experiments which are going on at Bechelbronn at this mo- 
ment will, I trust, settle the question definitively as to whether during 
the fatting of hogs and other animals there is any formation of fat at 
the cost of the starch and sugar of the food. 

The observations which I have made on the fattening of hogs may 
be summed up in these terms : 



























s ^ 


■S o 




01 j^ 


* 




B 5P • 




C.J3 


•a 


Is^ 


1-il 


• 


« o 


E. 




tS'l 


Duration of the exi)cri- 
nient. 




£ 


^ U 3. 


O « K 




a^ 




.i c 


<;3 




lbs. 


lbs. 


lbs. 


Montlis. 


Months. 


Days. 


.^.l 


0.410 


8.. 58 


1 


11 


" 


13.. 5 


0.8,16 


13.21 


9 


" 


21 


15.7 


1.958 
1.254 


12.. 52 


0* 
12 


.. 


20 


11.6 


0.572 


4-91 


15 


" 


104 


15.4 


0.660 


4.21 


14 




58 



The allowance to the hogs in the preceding observations was al- 
ways abundant. To determine the quantity of potatoes consumed 
each day by a hog in full growth, and whose weight was known, I 
had him weighed at intervals, as well as the potato ration, placed 
before him at will, which he ate daily, and found that when he 
weighed : 



lbs. 

138 he ate 

145 

160.5 " 

184.8 " 



lbs. 

11 

13.2 
15.4 
17.0 



equivalent In hay to 



lbs. 

3.4 
4.2 
4.8 
5.5 



Per ion of the 
live wiiglil in hay 
2.52 
2.89 
30.1 
3.02 



THE HOG. 471 

To these observations on the keep and fatting of horned cattle, 
horses, and hogs, I would gladly have added remarks of like extent 
on the growth and fattening of sheep ; unfortunately, I have only 
been able to obtain very imperfect information on this branch of 
rural economy. I have, however, sought to ascertain approximately 
the relations which exist between the weight of a young animal, the 
food consumed, and the increase in live weight, by means of the fol- 
lowing experiment : 

Two sheep six months old weighed together 134.2 lbs. 

SixtecD days afterwards they weighed • • 151.8 

Total increase 17.6 

Increase per day, per head 0.55 

In the sixteen days the two sheep ate : 

Hay 2-2.0 = Hay 22.0 

Potatoes 53.3 = Hay 16.9 

38.9 

Or per head in hay 19.45 

Or per head per day 1.21 

This would give us about 2.9 of hay provender per cent, of the 
live weight, so that a ration which should be represented by 100 of 
hay would be followed by an increase on the weight of a sheep of 
six months old of 27.7 per cent. 

^ VI. OF THE PRODUCTION OF MANURE. 

The forage consumed on the farm being the source of the manure 
produced there, it would seem that it must be easy to calculate the 
value of all that comes from the stables and cow-houses day after 
day. I do not mean the mass or weight of the dejections here, for 
it is certain that the more or less watery nature of the food mate- 
rially influences the weight of the dung produced ; and if a common 
mode of calculating the quantity of dung by merely multiplying the 
weight of food consumed by three be correct in some cases, it is 
very far from the truth in others. The dung produced on the farm 
must be calculated on diflierent grounds from this ; and without pre- 
tending to any degree of accuracy which is really unattainable, it is 
still very possible to get at the quantity of azote which is contained 
in the litter and in the dejections, so as to be able to refer to a stand- 
ard the quantity of manure made. 

Were not the azotized principles of the food partly exhaled by 
animals, the whole quantity not appearing in the excretions, it is 
obvious that it would suffice to have ascertained the quantity of azote 
contained in the food, to be in a condition to decide on that con- 
tained in the dung added to the litter. But this cannot be done ; to 
be convinced of the fact, it is enough to take the least complex case, 
that of a fuU-grow^n horse, receiving as his allowance per day : 

Hay 22 lbs. containing 1775.3 grains of azote. 

Oats 11 " 1389.4 

Straw.... 11 " 308.7 " 

Latter .... 8.8 " 108.0 " 

Azote 3>M$1.4 



Al'i THE HOG. 

Now assuming 2 per cent, as the contents in azote of dry farm- 
yard dung, we see that the food consumed by the horse, speaking 
theoretically, mi^ht or sliould form 25.5 lbs. of dry manure. But 
we have seen that a horse or cow will exhale from 355.0 to 116.8 
grs. of azole, which is all derived from the food, and is consequent- 
ly lost to the dung-heap. Now 385.9 grs. of azote represent 2.75 
lbs. of dry manure ; so that the dry dung produced by the horse kept 
in the stable, will be reduced fiom 25.5 lbs. to 23.1 lbs. In the 
course of a year, upon this calculation, the azote exhaled will dimin- 
ish the weight of dry dung produced by one horse by a ipiaiitity 
equal to 1045 lbs. 

The azote of the food of a cow is still more considerable; in quan- 
tity, and the loss to the dunghill proportionally larger ; inasmuch 
as to the amount she exhales, must be added all that goes to consti- 
tute the milk she gives. Practical men, without pretending to get 
at the cause of the thing, have long been aware of the fact, that a 
cow produces less dung than a horse ; and the truth of this is read- 
ily demonstrated on scientific grounds. Suppose a cow, consuming , 
the equivalent of 33 lbs. of hay, and giving about 17 pints of milk 
oer day : 

33 lbs. of hay contnin 2670 grs. of azote, 

44 " straw for litter contain.. I'iS " 

Azote 2793=: 19.8 lbs. of dung supposed to be dry. 

But in the 24 hours, there have been of 

Azote cxh;iled 38.5.'.l grains, and of 

Azote in 17 pints, or 22.7 lbs. of milk carried otT, 802.7 grains, 

1188.0 = 8.8 of drj'di/ng. 

The 33 lbs. of hay digested by the cow, consequently, the litter 
added, have only produced 8.8 of dry dung. The azote of the food, 
of which we find no account in the dejections, amounts per annum 
to nearly 30 cwts., (3300 lbs.,) the deficiency in the case of the 
horse amounting to no more than 1045 lbs., (0 cwts. 1 qr. 9 lbs.) 

The estimation of the dung produced by growing animals, pre- 
sents several special difficulties, inasmuch, as besides the azote 
exhaled from the lungs, there is the quantity that is fixed in the liv- 
ing body. 

In one of the experiments which I have related, it appears that a 
calf six months old, consuming : 

Hay 9.r> lbs. containing lOOO.H azote, 

I)isch.Trg(Mi by its dejections f3.S.3 " 

Azote fixed or e.vlialcd in 24 hours .. 231.5 " 

The azote lost to the manure by the fixing of azote is therefore 
very considerable, in the case of young animals as well as of milch- 
kine. We find, I'or example, that for every 100 lbs. weight of hay 
consumed : 

A horse supplies the efjiiivalcnt of .'il lbs. of dry standard dung, 

A milch-cow 32 " " 

A calf of sLx months 40 " * " 



' matter. 


Sails. 


Azote. 


23 


1.0 


3.5 


23 


" 


" 


20 


0.9 


3.0 


40 


1.0 


7.2 


81 


2.0 


13.8 


91 


0.7 


14.4 


70 




" 


64 


35.0 


5.2 


10 


1.0 


2.9 


80 


" 


1.9 



THE HOG. 473 

To estimate with any rigor the quantity of azotized manure which 
ought to result from the forage consumed on the farm, it were ne- 
cessary to know the proportion of azote contained in the bodies of 
all the animals entertained upon it. Having the increase of weight 
that occurred in the stable, cow-house, pig-stye, and poultry-yard, we 
should then be in a condition to know the precise quantity of dung 
which it would be necessary to retrench from that which the forage 
ought to have produced, had there been no production of animal 
matter, had the whole of the azote of the food passed through the 
live-stock to the dung-hill. Unfortunately, we have no very precise 
data by which we might calculate the quantity of azote contained in 
a living animal. I shall, nevertheless, endeavor to apply such as 
we possess. 

From a few practical experiments, and the information at my 
command, I admit that the following substances in their usual state 
contain per cent. : 

Moisture. 

Beef-flesh 77 

Veal 77 

Blood 80 

Skin 60 

Hair 9 

Horn 9 

Beefbones (tibia) 30 

An entire skeleton 36 

Brain, intestines, &.C.--.-81 
Fat freed from slcin 20 

These data applied to the various parts which enter into the 
constitution of the animals which up to this point have engaged 
our attention, we should have for the quantity of azote per cent, 
contained : 

In homed cattle 3.47 

In the horse 3.64 

In the hog 3.80 

In the sheep 3.66 

Average 3.64 

For every 100 lbs. of live weight produced on the farm, conse- 
quently, we may, without probably being a great way from the truth, 
presume that there has been 3.6 of azote fixed, azote obtained from 
the forage, and which, consequently, cannot go to the dung-heap ; in 
other words, every 100 lbs. of live weight produced, deprive the 
establishment of 180 lbs. of dry standard dung, or nearly 18 cwts. 
of moist farm-yard dung.* 

We may be allowed, therefore, to entertain the hope that we shall 
one day be able, from the quantity of forage consumed upon a farm, 
lo calculate the actual quantity of manure which we shall have at 
our disposal. To arrive at this result, it would indeed only be ne- 
cessary to subtract the manure represented by the azote exhaled 
from and fixed in the bodies of the stock, from the amount of azo- 

* This discussion will undoubtedly extend by and by to phosphoric acid. I shall 
only say at this time, that from the results obtained in the case of a pig, the phos- 
phoric acid appears to be in the proportion of from 2 to 3 per cent, of the live weight. 

40* 



474 THE HOG. 

tized manure represented by the whole quantity of forage, were it 
to be used immediately. To obtain results of any accuracy, how- 
ever, it were necessary to possess data both more numerous and 
more precise than any we have at present. This perfection of co- 
cfficients must be viewed as an affair for the future ; agricultural 
science has almost every thing to create. 

In estimating the quantity of manure from the forage consumed, 
it has been supposed that there is no loss. With reference to the 
stall or cow-house, a careful husbandman may approach this perfec- 
tion, by doing almost the contrary of all that is usually done now-a- 
days ; i. c. by taking every precaution against waste ; but it is obvi- 
ous that in so far as the stable is concerned, there must always be a 
considerable and inevitable loss ; all that falls upon highwi^ys and 
byways is irretrievably gone. It is, indeed, matter of ordinary cal- 
culation that in consequence of their work out of doors, the horses 
upon a farm do not afford more than about two-thirds of the dung 
which ought to be obtained from the provender consumed. Some 
experiments made in the stables at Bechelbronn show that the loss 
in this way may amount to one quarter of the whole amount of 
dejections ; still, as the animals are for the major part engaged on 
the land of the farm, it is obvious that what falls there is by no 
means lost. To supply my reader with definite sums from a partic- 
ular instance, upon which he may fix his mind, I shall state for his 
information that in the course of 1840-41,* my stock at Bechelbronn, 
consisting of sixteen head of cattle, eleven calves, twenty-seven 
horses, and (?) hogs, consumed 333,579 lbs. or 148 tons, 18 cwts. 
1 qr. 15 lbs. of forage, containing G925 lbs. of azote, and produced 
upon their original weight 20,8-21 lbs. of flesh, fat, and milk, contain- 
ing with the addition of a calculated quantity for loss from out of 
door droppings, exhalation by the lungs, &c., 26311bs. of azote. 
The forage and the litter, from their contents in azote, ought to have 
produced about 15,35G cwt. of moist farm-yard dung ; they, however, 
produced no more than 9522 cwt. ; and, in ftict, we see that there 
had been a consumption of azote by arrest within the bodies of the 
stock, by exhalation from their lungs, and by loss, amounting to 2631 
lbs. ; by an equivalent quantity of dung, therefore, had the absolute 
produce necessarily been diminished. 

Thaer allows that articles of dry forage and litter double their 
weight in becoming converted into dung. The statement which I 
have just made agrees on the whole pretty well with this estimate. 
In our cow-house ration, one-half only is generally hay, the other 
half consists of roots and tubers. The dry forage and litter conse- 
quently amount to 4660 cwt., which according to Thaer ought to 
become changed into 9320 cwt. of dung, a number not very wide of 
that to which we have come. Sinclair reckons the dung of the cow- 
house at four times the weight of the litter, a view which neither 
accords with Thaer's estimate nor with our experience. 

I think it altogether unnecessary to insist on the importance to 

* Twolvo monllis, I presume.— Eno. Ed. 



METEOROLOGY. TEMPERATURE. 475 

the farmer of a foreknowledge of the quantity of manure which he 
may reasonably calculate on obtaining from a known weight of forage 
consumed upon his premises. Of the various methods proposed for 
arriving at this information, that which I have em.ployed, and which 
is based on ascertaining the amount of azote, appears to me the best 
calculated to supply satisfactory results, particularly when experience 
shall have corrected or confirmed the numbers which I have adopted 
as the elements of my calculations. 

I have already said that any supplementary forage, or forage 
added to that which is indispensable to the production of manure, 
generally acquires, by the fact of its conversion into power or into 
exportable substances, a value superior to that which it could have 
had of itself in the market-place. This additional forage is that 
fraction of the provender, the azote of which figures in the statements 
that have just been made as azote exhaled or assimilated and fixed. 
We find, in fact, in representing this forage which is lost to the 
dung-heap, but gained to power and exportable articles, that in the 
stall, 100 lbs. of hay yield 8.6 lbs. of live weight, and 40.8 lbs. of 
milk, and that in the hog-stye, 100 lbs. of hay yield 21 of living 
weight. In the stable, again, tlie azote fixed, exhaled, or lost amounts 
to nearly 1540 lbs., represented by about 1218 cwts. of hay, which 
have yielded 1504 lbs. of live weight, due in great part to the birth 
and growth of foals, in addition to the force represented by 8370 
days' work. 



CHAPTER IX. 

METEOROLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

§ 1. TEMPERATURE. 

The phenomena of vegetation are always accomplished under the 
influence of a certain temperature. If, in addition, the concurrence 
of light, air, moisture, and various inorganic substances, be required, 
it is still perfectly certain that all of these agents only contribute to 
the development of a plant when they are assisted by a due measure 
of heat, variable with reference to the different vegetable species, 
and comprised within limits that are rather far apart, but essential. 
Germination, for example, takes place at a temperature a few de- 
grees above the freezing point of water, 38" or 39° F., and at one 
indicated by 100° or 120° of the same scale. The forests of tropical 
countries thrive in a hot, moist atmosphere, which often marks up- 
wards of 100° F. ; and I met with a saxifrage upon the Andes, at 
an elevation of 15,748 feet above the level of the sea, beyond the 
line of perpetual snow, and very near the line of perpetual con- 
gelation. 

Some families of plants require a temperature not only high, but 
that never falls below a certain very limited degree ; the majority 



476 METEOROLOGY. TKMPEBATURE. 

of the intertropical plants are in this predicament. There are others 
which, imperatively requiring a high temperature for their growth 
and perfection, nevertheless suspend their powers during the winter, 
and bear without detriment degrees of cold of great intensity : 
among the number may be cited the larch-pine, which abounds in 
Siberia, and stands the utmost rigors of its climate, where the 
thermometer at mid-winter frequently falls to 30° and even 40° be- 
low zero, F. 

The meteorological habitudes or dispositions of plants being ex- 
tremely various, it follows, that the geographical distribution of 
plants is a consequence of the distribution of heat over the surface 
of the globe — of climate. 

The earth we inhabit appears to have a heat p.roper to itself; it is 
a heated body in progress of cooling. It is found, in fact, that as 
tlie centre of the earth is approached, as mines penetrate fliore 
d(!eply below its surface, the temperature increases. Below a very 
limited distance from the surface, the temperature ceases to be 
alfected by variations in the temperature of the general atmosphere ; 
from the point of invariable temperature the subterranean heat in- 
creases uniformly at the rate of 1° cent. (1.8° Fahr.) for every 101 
feet of descent. 

The depth at which the point or stratum of invariable temperature 
is met with, varies in different places, and is mainly affected by the 
extent of the thermometrical variations in the superincumbent air in 
the course of tlie year. In the liigher latitudes, consequently, the 
depth is very considerable; at Paris, for example, M. Arago has 
found that a thermometer, buried at 26} feet under the surface, does 
not remain absolutely stationary. In climates of greater constancy, 
as may be conceived, the layer of invariable temperature will be 
found much nearer the surface ; were the temperature of the air in- 
variable, the layer of invariatile temperature would necessarily be 
ft)und at the surface of the ground. In countries under and close to 
the equator, this, in fact, is found to be the case. From a series of 
observations which I made in South America, between the 2d paral- 
lel of southern and the 11th of northern latitude, I found that, near 
liie line, the layer of invariable temperature is found nearly at the 
surface : the thermometer, placed in a hole about one foot deep, 
under the shade of an Indian cabin, or, a shed, does not vary by more 
than from one-tenth to two-tenths of a degree cent. 

It was probably under the influence of the internal or proper heat 
of the globe, according to M. de Humboldt, that the same species 
of animals which are now confined to the torrid zone, inhabited, in 
former and remote ages, the northern hemispiiere, covered as it then 
was by arborescent ferns and stately palms. It is easy to imagine 
how, as the surface of the earth cooled, the distribution of climates 
becanie almost exclusively dependent on the action of the solar rays, 
and how also those tribes of plants and of animals, the organization 
of which required a higher temperature and more equable climate, 
gradually died out and disappeared.* 

* Humboldt's Cenlrul .Vsia, v. iii. p. 98. 



METEOROLOGY. TEMPERATURE. 477 

In the state of stability to which the surface of the globe appears 
actually to have attained, the sun must be considered as the agent 
which most directly influences the temperature of our atmosphere. 
The length of the day, the number of hours during which the sun is 
above the horizon, coupled with the height to which he ascends, 
such is the cause with which the temperature of each particular lati- 
tude is primarily connected ; and, in looking at the subject practi- 
cally, it is found to be so precisely ; not only is the mean tempera- 
ture of the year dependent on the length of the days, and the meridian 
altitude of the sun, but the mean temperature of each month in the 
year is essentially connected with the same circumstances. In the 
northern hemisphere, the temperature rises from about the middle 
of January, slowly at first, more rapidly in April and May, to reach 
its maximum point in July and August, when it begins to fall again 
until mid-January, when it is at its minimum. 

The highest mean annual temperature is, of course, observed in 
the neighborhood of the equator ; between 0° and 10° or 12° of lati- 
tude on either side, at the level of the sea, where, besides the equal- 
ity of day and night, the sun, always elevated, passes the zenith 
twice a year. The observations that have been made up to this 
time, lead us to conclude that this temperature oscillates between 
26° and 29° cent. ; 78.8° and 84.2° Fahr. 

Did the earth present unvarying uniformity of surface, not only 
with reference to elevation but to constitution, so that the power of 
absorbing and of radiating heat should be everywhere alike, the cli- 
mate of a place would depend almost entirely on its geographical 
position : the points of equal temperature would be found on the 
same parallels of latitude, or, to employ the happy expression intro- 
duced by M. de Humboldt, the isothermal lines would all be parallel 
with the equator. But the surface of our planet is covered with un- 
dulations and asperities, which cause its outline to vary to infinity ; 
and then the soil is dry, or swampy ; it is a moving desert of sand, 
or covered with umbrageous and impenetrable forests ; and all this 
causes corresponding varieties in climate, for the surface becomes 
heated in different degrees as it is in one or other of these condi- 
tions. Another very important consideration is, that the surface is 
a continent, or an island in the ocean : the climate of a country, or 
a district, is vastly influenced by its proximity to or distance from 
the sea. The difficulty, the slowness, with which such a mass of 
liquid as the ocean becomes either heated or cooled, is the cause of 
the temperate character both of the summers and winters of the 
shores it bathes, and the islands of moderate dimensions it surrounds. 
As we penetrate great continents from the sea-board, we find that 
the temperature both of summer and winter becomes extreme, and 
the difference between the mean summer and mean winter tempera- 
ture is great ; and again we find, that places which have considera- 
bly different latitudes, have still very nearly the same mean annual 
temperature. The mean temperature of Paris, in latitude 48° 50', 
is about 51.4° F. ; that of London, in lat. 51° 31', is 50.7° F. ; that 



478 METEOROLOGY. TEMPERATURE. 

of Dublin, in lat. 53" 23', is 49.1" F. ; and that of Edinburgh, in lat 
55" 57', is 47.4" F. 

An island, a peninsula, and the sea-shore, consequently, enjoy a 
more temperate and equable climate — the summers less sultry, the 
winters more mild. On the shores of Glenarm, in Ireland, in lati- 
tude 55", the myrtle vegetates throughout the year as in Portugal ; 
it rarely freezes in winter ; but the heat of summer does not suffice 
to ripen the grape. Under the very same parallel, however, at 
Konigsberg, in Prussia, they experience a cold of 17° and 18" below 
zero of Fahrenheit's scale in the winter. Tiie ponds and little lakes 
of the Feroe Islands, although situated in N. lat. 62°, never freeze, 
and the mean winter temperature is very nearly 40" F. On the 
coasts of Devonshire, in England, the winters are so mild, that the 
orange-tree, as a standard, will there carry fruit ; and the agave has 
been seen to flourish, after having lived both winter and summer, 
for twenty-eight years, in the open air, uninjured. 

One of the grand characteristics of what may be called a mari- 
time climate, is the less difference which occurs between the tem- 
perature of summer and that of winter. At Edinburgh, for instance, 
the difference only amounts to 19° F. ; at Moscow, which is nearly 
on the same parallel, the difference amounts to 50° F. ; and at 
Kasan, (lat. 56",) it is as much as 56.3" F. 

The influence of extensive continents, or remoteness fi'om the 
sea-board, does not seem merely to render a climate extreme, in- 
creasing at once the heat of summer and the cold of winter. The 
collective observations on temperature, made in Europe and in Asia, 
show that the mean annual temperature decreases as we penetrate 
more into the interior of continents towards the east. Humboldt 
ascribes this diminution of tem])erature partly to the refrigerating 
action of the prevailing winds. While the mean annual temperature 
of Amsterdam (N. lat. 52" 22') is 49.0" F., that of Berlin (N. lat. 
52" 31') is 47.4" F. ; that of Copenhagen (N. lat. 55" 41') is 46.7" F. ; 
and that of Kasan (N. lat. 55° 48') is but 35.9" F. 

The highest temperature which has yet been registered, as occur- 
ring in the open air, appears to have been observed by Burckhardt, in 
Upper Egypt ; the thermometer indicated 47.5" cent., upwards of 
117" F. The lowest was seen by Captain Back, in North America, 
when the thermometer fell to — .56" cent., 68.8" F. below zero. 

i^* II. DECREASE OF TEMPERATURE IN THE SUPERIOR STRATA OK THE 
ATMOSPHERE. 

The temperature rises rapidly as we ascend in the atmosphere ; 
places among the mountains always possess a climate more severe 
as they are higher above the level of the sea. Even under the 
equator, height of position modifies tiie seasons so much, that the 
liandet of Antisana, which is within one degree of south latitude, but 
wliicii is upwards of 13,000 feet above the sea level, has a mean 
temperature which does not differ much from that of St. Peters- 
bur£[h. Near it, but at a still greater iicight, the summit of Cyambe, 



METEOROLOGY. TEMPERATURE. 479 

covered by an immense mass of everlasting snow, is cut by the 
equinoctial line itself. 

The cold which prevails among lofty mountains, is ascribed to the 
dilatation which the air of lower regions experiences in its upward 
ascent, to a more rapid evaporation under diminished pressure, and 
to the intensity of nocturnal radiation. 

Places which are situated upon the same mountain-chain, nearly 
in the same latitude, and at the same height, have often very differ- 
ent climates. The temperature which would be proper to a place 
perfectly isolated, is necessarily modified by a considerable number 
of circumstances. Thus the radiation of heated plains of considera- 
ble extent, the nature of the color of the rocks, the thickness of the 
forests, the moistness or dryness of the soil, the vicinity of glaciers, 
the prevalence of particular winds, hotter or colder, moister or drier, 
the accumulation of clouds, &c., are so many causes which tend to 
modify the meteorological conditions of a country, whatever its 
mere geographical position. The neighborhood of volcanoes in a 
state of activity does not appear to affect the temperature sensibly ; 
thus Purace, Pasto, Cumbal, which have flaming volcanoes towering 
over them, have not warmer climates than Bogota, Santa Rosa, De 
Osos, Le Param de Herve, &c., situated on sand-stone or syenite. 

From the whole series of observations which I had an opportunity 
of making on the Cordilleras, it appears that one degree of tempera- 
ture, cent., 1.8° F., corresponds to 195 metres, or 649.4 feet of 
ascent among the equatorial Andes. In Europe, it has been ascer- 
tained that the decrease of temperature in ascending mountains, is 
more rapid during the day than during the night — during summer 
than during the winter ; for example, between Geneva and Mount 
St. Bernard, to have the Fahrenheit thermometer fall one degree, it 
is necessary to ascend : 

In spring 326.1 feet. 

In summer 336.6 

In autumn 382.2 

In winter 422.2 

It sometimes happens, however, that in winter, in a zone of no 
great elevation, the temperature increases with the elevation — a fact 
which Messrs. Bravais and Lottin observed in the 70° of N. lat., in 
calm weather ; at an elevation between 1312 and 1640 feet, the rise 
amounted to as many as 6° centigrade, 10.8° Fahrenheit. 

In no part of the globe is the diminution of temperature, occasion- 
ed by a rise above the level of the sea, more remarkable than among 
equatorial mountain ranges ; and it is not without astonishment that 
the European, leaving the burning districts which produce the banana 
and cocoa-tree, frequently reaches, in the course of a few hours, the 
barren regions which are covered with everlasting snow. " Upon 
each particular rock of the rapid slope of the Cordillera," says M. 
de Humboldt, " in the series of climates superimposed in stages, we 
find inscribed the laws of the decrease of caloric, and of the geo- 
graphical distribution of vegetable forms."* 

* Humboldt's Central Asia, vol. iii. p. 236 



480 METEOROLOGY. TEMPERATURE. 

Ill the hottest countries of the earth, the summits of very lofty 
mountains are constantly covered with snow ; in the elevated and 
cold strata of the atmosphere, the watery vapor is condensed, and 
falls in the state of hail and snow. In tiie plain, hail melts almost 
immediately ; the fusion is slower upon the mountains ; and for each 
latitude there is a certain elevation where hail and snow no longer 
melt perceptibly. This elevation is the inferior limit of perpetual 
snow. 

The accidental causes which tend to modify the temperature of a 
climate, also act in raising or lowering the snow-line. On the south- 
ern slope of the Himalaya, for example, the snow-line does not de- 
scend so low as it does upon the northern slope ; and in Peru, from 
14° to 16° of S. latitude, Mr. Pentland found the perpetual snow-line, 
at an elevation of 1312 feet higher than it is under the equator. 

Elevation above the level of the sea, consequently, has the sahie 
effect upon climate as increase in latitude. Upon mountain ranges, 
vegetation undergoes modification in its forms, becomes decrepit, 
and disappears towards the line of perpetual snow, precisely as it 
does within the polar circle, and for no other than the same reason, 
viz., depression of temperature. 

The constancy and the small extent of variation which occurs in 
the temperature of the atmosphere under the equator, enables us to 
indicate with some precision the point of mean temperature below 
which there is no longer any vegetation. In ascending Chimbora- 
zo I met with this point at the height of 15774.5 feet, where the 
mean temperature approached 35° F., and where consequently the 
saxifrages, which root among the rocks, must still receive a temper- 
ature of from 41° to 43" F. during the day, inasmuch as far beyond 
the inf(fiior snow-line, at an elevation of 19,685 feet above the sea- 
line, I saw a thermometer suspended in the air, and in the shade 
mark 44.6° F. 

In considering the extension of A'egetation towards the polar re- 
gions, we discover plants growing in very high latitudes in places 
which have a mean temperature much below that which I believe to 
be the limit of vegetable life on the mountains of the equatorial region. 
In these rigorous climates vegetation is suspended by the severity 
of the cold during the greater portion of the year ; it is only during 
the brief and passing heat of summer that the vegetable world 
wakes from its long winter sleep. Nova Zcmbla, lat. 73° N., the 
mean temperature of whose summer is between 34° and 35° F., is, 
perhaps, like the perpetual snow-line of the equator, the term of 
vegetable existence. It is also to the very remarkable heat of the 
summer in countries situated at the northern extremity of the con- 
tinent of Asia, remarkable if it be contrasted with the intensity of 
the winter cold, that man succeeds in rearing a few culinaiy vegeta- 
bles in those dreadful climates. At Jakoustk, in 62° of N. lat., and 
where mercury is frozen during two months of the year, the mean 
temperature of summer is very nearly 61' F. We have here, as M. 
de Humboldt observes, " a well-characterized continental climate," 
examples of which indeed are frequent in tiio north of America. At 



METEOROLOGY. GROWTH OF PLANTS. 481 

Jakoustk wheat and rye sometimes yield a return of 15 for 1, al- 
though at the depth of a yard the soil which grows them is con- 
stantly frozen.* 

The limit of perpetual snow being much lower upon the mountains 
of Europe than in tropical countries, agriculture ceases at a much 
less elevation. At a height of 6560 feet above the level of the sea, 
the vegetables of the plain have almost entirely disappeared. In 
Northern Switzerland the vine does not grow at an elevation of 
more than 1800 feet above the sea-line ; maize scarcely ripens at an 
elevation of 2850 feet, while in the Andes it still affords abundant 
harvests at an elevation of 8260 feet. On the plateau or table land 
of Los Pastos, fields of barley are seen at upwards of 10,000 feet 
above the level of the sea ; but on the northern slope of Monte Rosa, 
in Switzerland, barley fails at an elevation of about 4260 feet ; on 
the southern slope, indeed, it reaches a height of about 6560 feet ; 
and this great variation in the ultimate limit of barley is frequently 
observed with reference to the same plant grown upon opposite as- 
pects of a mountain range. The difference is ascribed to local in- 
fluences ; thus, it is a well-ascertained fact, that on the mountains 
of the northern hemisphere vegetation reaches a much higher lati- 
tude upon southern than upon northern exposures ; but a general 
law, and one applicable to every latitude, is, that the higher we rise 
above the level of the sea, the scantier does vegetation become, the 
later do harvests reach maturity ; but as the heat of the atmosphere 
increases with the elevation, it follows that there is an obvious rela- 
tion between the time a crop is upon the ground and the mean tem- 
perature of the place or season where it grows. We have still to 
examine this relationship. 

^ III. METEOROLOGICAL CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH CERTAIN 
PLANTS GROW IN DIFFERENT CLIMATES. 

In discussing the conditions of temperature under which the va- 
i-ious plants that are common in our European agriculture come to 
maturity, we are led to conclusions which are not without interest. 
A knowledge of the mean temperature of a place situated between 
the tropics suffices of itself to give us an idea of the nature of its 
agriculture ; in fact, the temperature of each day differs little from 
that of the entire year, during which vegetable life proceeds without 
interruption. It is altogether different with regard to countries sit- 
uated beyond the limits of the torrid zone. The mean annual tem- 
perature is not then a datum sufficient to enable us to appreciate the 
agricultural importance of a country. In order to know what the 
earth will produce, the temperature proper to the different seasons 
of the year must be known ; in a word, it is the mean temperature 
of the cycle in which vegetation begins and ends that it imports us 
to ascertain, in order to learn what the useful plants are which may 
be required of the soil. 

In examining the question which now engages us, we first inquire 
what time elapses between the sprouting of a plant and its maturity, 

* Humboldt's Central Asia, vol. iii. p. 49. 
41 



482 METEOROLOGY. GROWTH OF PLANTS. 

and then we determine the temperature of the interval which sepa- 
rates these two extreme epochs in vegetable life. In comparing 
these data with reference to the same species of jilant grown in Eu- 
rope and America, we arrive at the following curious result, that the 
number of days that elapse between the commencement of vegeta- 
tion and the period of ripeness, is by so much the greater as the 
mean temperature is lower. The duration of the life of the vegeta- 
ble would be the same, however different the climate, were this tem- 
perature identical ; it will be longer or it will be shorter as the mean 
temperature of the cycle itself is lower or higher. In other words, 
the duration of the vegetation appears to be in the inverse ratio of 
the mean temperature ; so that if we multiply the number of days 
during which a given plant grows in different climates, by the mean 
temperature of each, we obtain numbers that are very nearly equal. 
This result is not only remarkable in so far as it seems to indicate 
that upon every parallel of latitude, at all elevations above the level 
of the sea, the same plant receives in the course of its existence an 
equal quantity of heat, but it may find its direct application by ena- 
bling us to foresee the possibility of acclimating a vegetable in a 
country, the mean temperature of the several months of which is 
known. 

CULTIVATION OF WHEAT, ALSACE. 

In 1835 we sowed our wheat on the 1st of November; the cold 
set in shortly after the plant had sprung, and the harvest took place 
the IGth of July, 1836. The vegetation during the last days of au- 
tumn is so slow and irregular, that it may be assumed without sensi- 
ble error, that it really begins in spring, when the frosts are no longer 
felt ; from this period only does it proceed without interruption. For 
Alsace I regard this period as beginning with the 1st of March. 

The period of the growth was, therefore, 137 days, the mean tem- 
perature was 59' F., (3083° F.) 

Tremois wheat, this same year, required 131 days to ripen under 
a mean temperature of between 60° and 61° F., (7925° F.) 

At Paris, setting out from the 31st of March, wheat generally re- 
quires 160 days to attain maturity, the mean temperature being 
about 56° F., (8960° F.) 

At Alais the month of February having generally but (ew days 
of heat, it may be regarded as the epocli when the continued vege- 
tation of autumn-sown wheat commences. The harvest taking 
place on the 27th of June, the number of days which it requires to 
ripen is 146, the mean temperature being between 57° and 58° F. 
(8322° F.) 

CULTIVATION OF WHEAT IN AMERICA. 

At Kingston, New York, the wheat is sown in autumn , vegeta- 
tion suspended through the winter resumes its activity in the begin- 
ning of April, and the harvest takes place about the 1st of August. 
The crop is therefore growing during about 122 days under the in- 
fluence of a mean temperature of 63° F. (7680° F.) 



METEOROLOGY. — GROWTH OF PLANTS. 493 

In the same place Tremois wheat is sown in the beginning of 
May, and the harvest takes place towards the 15th of August, so 
that it is 106 days on the ground under a mean temperature of 68° F., 
(7208" F.) 

At Cincinnati the wheat sown in the end of February is harvest- 
ed in the 2d week in July, say the 15th day, the crop is therefore 
137 days on the ground under a mean temperature of between 60° and 
61° F. (8288° F.) 

INTERTROPICAL REGION. 

Wheat sown at the end of February was reaped on the 25th of 
July at Zimijaca, plain of Bogota, having been 147 days on the 
ground, the mean temperature being between 58° and 59° F., 
(8526° F.) 

At Quinchuqui the vegetation of wheat begins in February and 
ends in the month of July, say, 181 days; and I found the mean 
temperature to be between 57° and 58° F. 

At Venezuela, according to M. Codazzi, wheat to ripen requires 
92 days at Turmero, mean temperature between 75.2° and 76° F., 
(6918° F. ;) 100 days at Truxillo, mean temperature 72.1° F., 
(7210° F.) 

CULTIVATION OF BARLEY. 

Of the cereals, barley is that which succeeds in the most diversi- 
fied climates. It comes to maturity under the burning heats of the 
tropics ; and in regions where the mean and constant temperature 
is scarcely 52° F., fields of barley of great beauty are still en- 
countered. 

At Alsace (Bechelbronn) barley sown at the end of April was 
harvested on the 1st of August. It had remained 92 days on the 
ground, the mean temperature having been between 66° and 67° F., 
(6118° F.) 

Winter barley sown on the 1st of November was cut on the 1st 
of July. Reckoning the period of active vegetation from the 1st 
of March, it was 122 days in coming to maturity, the mean temper- 
ature having been between 58° and 59° F., (7076° F.) 

At Alais winter barley is harvested on the 18th of June. As- 
suming that, as in the case of wheat, the 1st of February is the date 
of commencing vegetation, it must iiave taken 137 days to come to 
maturity under a mean temperature between 55° and 56° F. 

In Egypt upon the banks of the Nile barley is sown in the end 
of November, and the harvest takes place at the end of February, 
at an interval therefore of 90 days, and the mean temperature of the 
winter at Cairo is nearly 70° F., (6300° F.) 

At Kingston, North America, the barley is sown in the begin- 
ning of May, and the crop is cut towards the beginning of August, 
in about 92 days, therefore, the mean temperature being between 
66° to 67° F. 

At Cumbal under the line there is no fixed period for sowing 
barley. It is generally put into the ground on the approach of the 



484 METEOROLOGY. GROWTH OF PLANTS. 

rainy season about the 1st of June, and it is then reaped about the 
middle of November ; it therefore stands on the ground for about 
168 days, and the mean temperature is between 51° and 52° F. 

At Santa Fe de Bogota they reckon about four months between 
the barley seed-time and harvest, or about 122 days, the mean tem- 
perature being between 58° and 59° F. 

CULTIVATION OF MAIZE, OR INDIAN CORN. 

In the neighborhood of Bechelbronn the maize which sprouted on 
the first of June yielded an abundant harvest on the 1st of October, 
the mean temperature having been 68° F. 

In South America maize comes to maturity in the course of three 
months, say 92 days, the mean temperature being between 81° and 
82° F.; but on the elevated plains, as that of Santa Fe, maize will 
require six months to come to maturity, say 183 days, and there the 
mean temperature is 59° F. 

CULTIVATION OF THE POTATO. 

In 1836 our potatoes at Bechelbronn were put into the ground on 
the 1st of May, and the crop was gathered on the 15th of October, 
at\er 157 days, therefore, tlie mean temperature having been about 
65° F.; but in ordinary years, when the temperature is less elevated 
than that of 1836, the potato crop is generally gathered at the end 
of October, after 183 days, the mean temperature having been as 
before nearly 59° F. 

In the neighborhood of Alais potatoes are planted at the end of 
March and taken up about the 1st of September, after five months 
or 153 days, the mean temperature of which has been 70° F. 

According to M. Codazzi potatoCvS are grown near the lake of Va- 
lencia, (Venezuela,) in 120 days, and the mean temperature of Ma- 
racaibo near the lake is 78° F. 

According to the same observer, the potato still yields good crops 
at Merida in the Cordilleras, where the mean temperature is between 
71° and 72° F., and the growth lasts about 4| months. 

On the temperate levels of New Granada at Santa Fe I saw po- 
tatoes set in the middle of December immediately after the rainy 
season, and the harvest was gathered in tlie course of the first week 
in June, the crop therefore was at least 200 days in the ground, the 
mean temperature liaving been between 58' and 59' F. 

On the occasion of my ascent of the volcanic mountain, Antisana, 
I ate on the Ith of August some potatoes which had just been gath- 
ered, and which had been planted in the beginning of November, so 
that the crop had been 276 days in the ground, the mean tempera- 
ture of the country being 52' Fahr. 

But this is not yet the superior limit to the cultivation of potatoes 
under the equator. They arc still grown at Cambugan, the mean 
temperature of which scarcely exceeds 19° Fahr., the plant remain- 
ing nearly eleven months in the ground, and the crop being frequently 



METEOROLOGY. GROWTH OF PLANTS. 485 

lost from frosts that occur at this great elevation in the course of 
the months of November and January. 

CULTIVATION OF THE INDIGO PLANT. 

In Venezuela, in plantations very near the level of the sea, the 
first crop is cut about eighty days after sowing. The mean tem- 
perature is there between 81° and 82" Fahr. In other countries 
where the mean temperature ranges between 72° and 74° Fahr., 
which must be regarded as the limits to the growth of indigo, the 
first cutting takes place 3,y months or 106 days after the sowing. 
In India the first cutting seems generally to occur about ninety days 
after the sowing, and the mean temperature of the two winter months 
and of the summer months when the crop is on the ground, at Bom- 
bay is about 76° Fahr. 

I shall terminate this section by calling the attention of vegetable 
physiologists to a fact which appears to have escaped them. It is 
this : that plants in general, those of tropical countries very obvi- 
ously so, spring up, live, and flourish in temperatures that are nearly 
the same. In Europe and in North America, an annual plant is 
subjected to climatic influences of the greatest diversity. The 
cereals, for example, germinate at from 43° to 47° or 48° ; they get 
through the winter alive, making no progress ; but in the spring 
they shoot up, and the ear attains maturity at a season when the 
temperature, which has risen gradually, is somewhat steady at from 
74° to 78° Fahr. 

In equinoctial countries things pass differently : the germination, 
growth, and ripening of grain take place under degrees of heat which 
are nearly invariable. At Santa Fe the thermometer indicates 
79° Fahr. at seed as at harvest time. In Europe the potato is 
planted with the thermometer at from 50° to 54° Fahr., and it does 
not ripen until it has had the heats of July and August. But we 
have just seen that this plant grows, slowly indeed, but regularly, in 
places where the temperature, nearly invariable, does not rise above 
48.2° or 50° Fahr. 

Germination, and the evolution of those organs by which vegeta- 
bles perform their functions in the soil and in the air, take place at 
temperatures that vary between 32° and 112° Fahr.; but the most 
important epoch in their life, ripening, generally happens within 
much smaller limits, and which indicate the climate best adapted to 
their cultivation, if not always to their growth ; for the vine grows 
lustily in many places where its fruit never ripens. To produce 
drinkable wine, a vineyard must have not only a summer and an 
autumn sufficiently hot ; it is indispensable in addition that at a given 
period — that, namely, which follows the appearance of the seeds — 
there be a month, the mean temperature of which does not fall below 
19° cent, or about 66^° Fahr., a fact of which conviction may be 
obtained from the following table which I borrow from M. de Hum- 
boldt : 

41* 



486 



METEOROLOGY. — GROWTH OF PLANTS, 



Temperature of Temper»lure 

summer. of autumn. 

Bordeaux 70" Fahr. r>8« 

Frankfort, A. M- • 65 50 

Lausanne 65.2 49.7 

Paris G5.8 5'2.2 

Berlin fi3.2 4H.0 

London 62.9 51.2 

Cherbourg 01.9 54.4 



73.3° F. very favorable 

66.0 

65.8 

60.2 

64.4 Wine scarcely drinkable. 

64.1 Vine not cultivated. 

03.2 



In high latitudes the disappearance of vigorous vegetation in plants 
may depend quite as much on intensity of winter colds as on insuf- 
ficiency of summer heat. The equable climate of the equatorial re- 
gions is therefore much better adapted than that of Europe to de- 
termine the extreme limits of temperature between which vegetable 
species of different kinds will attain to maturity. Thus it has been 
found that the vine between the tropics is productive in temperatures 
that vary from 69° F. to 79" or 80°. I shall terminate with a list of 
the temperatures favorable to the particular vegetables in the success 
of which man is more especially interested. 



Maximum. Minimum 

Pinc-applc " 68 

Melon " 67 

Vanilla " 68 

(iuaduas " 77 

The vine 79 74 

Coflee 79 74 

Anise 77 66 

Wheat 74 (7) 74 

Barley 74 59 

Potatoes 75 (?) 52 

Arachaca 75 49 

Fla.\ 74 54 

Apple 72 59 

Oak 67 61 



Maximum. Minimum. 

The cocoa, or chocolate bean 82° F. 73" F. 

Banana " 64 

Indigo " 71 

Sugar-cane " 71 

Cocoa-nut " 78 

Palm " 78 

Tobacco " 65 

Manihot " 72 

Cotton-tree " 67 

Maize " 59 

Haricots " 59 

Orchil " 72 

Rice " 75 

Calabash •••• " 72 

Carica papaya " 66 

§ IV. COOLING THROUGH THE NIGHT; DEW, RAIN. 

When the sky is clear and calm during the night, vegetables cool 
down and very soon show a temperature inferior to that of the air 
which surrounds them. This property of cooling in such circum- 
stances belongs to all bodies ; but all do not possess it to the same 
degree. Organic substances, for instance, such as wool or cotton, 
feathers, &c., radiate powerfully and sink low ; polished metals, on 
the contrary, have a very weak emissive or radiating power ; and 
air and the gases in general radiate still more feebly. 

Inasmuch as a body is continually emhting heat, its temperature 
can only remain stationary so long as it receives from surrounding 
objects at every instant a quantity of caloric precisely equal in quan- 
tity to that which it loses from its surface. 

From the moment that these incessant exchanges cease to be in 
a state of perfect equality, the temperature of a body varies ; it may 
even experience a considerable degree of cooling if it is exposed 
during a clear night in an open spot. In such circumstances, a body 
gives off towards all the visible parts of the heavens more heat than 
it receives ; for the higher regions of the atmosphere are excessive- 



METEOROLOGY. NIGHT COOLING. 487 

ly cold, a fact which is proved by the rapid diminution of tempera- 
ture experienced on ascending mountains, or by rising into the air 
in balloons. The internal temperature of the globe, the tendency 
of which would be to compensate the loss experienced by the body 
which radiates, has scarcely any effect in lessening the cooling, be- 
cause it is propagated with extreme slowness, in consequence of the 
indifferent conducting powers of the earthy substances of which its 
crust is composed. The air, lastly, which surrounds the radiating 
body, does not warm it save in the most minute, inappreciable degree, 
and rather by its contact than by transmitting to it rays of heat, for 
the gases have only very limited emissive powers. It is even in 
consequence of the small amount of this power that the stratum of 
air in contact with the surface of the ground, does not by any means 
sink in the same proportion as the surface upon which it lies. Thus, 
in the circumstances which I have indicated, a thermometer laid 
upon the ground always indicates a temperature lower than that 
which is proclaimed by one suspended in the air ; and the difference 
is by so much the greater as the radiating power of the bodies ex- 
posed is more decided, or as it may take place into a greater extent 
•of the heavens. Every cause which agitates the air, which disturbs 
its transparency, which contracts the extent of the visible sphere, 
interferes with nocturnal radiation, and therefore with cooling. A 
cloud, like a screen, compensates either in whole or in part accord- 
ing to its proper temperature, for the loss of heat which a body upon 
the surface of the earth experiences in radiating into space. Wind, 
by continually renewing the air which is in contact with the surface 
of bodies tending to cool by radiation, always diminishes its effect to 
a certain extent. It is for this reason that a cloudless sky and a 
calm atmosphere, when nocturnal radiation attains its maximum, are 
most dangerous or injurious to our harvests. 

In a night which combines all the conditions favorable to radiation, 
a thermometer of small size laid upon the grass will be found to 
mark from 10° to 14° or 15° Fahr. below the temperature of the sur- 
rounding atmosphere. Thus in the temperate zone in Europe, as 
Mr. Daniell has observed, the temperature of meadows and heaths 
is liable to fall during ten months of the year by the mere effect of 
nocturnal radiation to a temperature below the freezing point of 
water ; this is particularly apt to happen both in spring and autumn, 
when the destructive effects of radiation are most to be apprehend- 
ed, the nocturnal radiations of those seasons frequently lowering the 
temperature several degrees below the freezing point. 

A few observations which I made upon nocturnal radiation at dif- 
ferent heights in the Cordilleras, seem to indicate that its effects 
there are less decided than in Europe, in consequence perhaps of 
the greater quantity of heat acquired by the ground in the course of 
the day. It appears that in this mountain range it rarely freezes at 
a height less than 6560 feet above the level of the sea ; although 
there are certain circumstances there which favor nocturnal radia- 
tion so much, that it is really impossible to indicate any very precise 
limits. In a general way it may be said that the crops of those 



488 METEOROLOGY. — NIGHT COOLING. 

plains which are sufficiently elevated to have a mean temperature 
of from 50° to 58° Fahr. are exposed to suffer from frost ; it fre- 
quently happens that a crop of wheat, barley, maize, or potatoes, of 
the richest appearance, is destroyed in a single night by the effect 
of radiation. In Europe during the fine nights of April and May, 
when the air is calm and the sky clear, buds, leaves, and young 
shoots are frequently cut off, are frozen ; in a word, although a ther- 
mometer in the air indicates several degrees above the point of con- 
gelation. Market gardeners and others who are much exposed to 
loss from this cause, ascribe the effect to the light of the moon of the 
months of April and May ; and they ground their opinion upon the 
fact that when the sky is clouded, the destructive effects of frost are 
not apparent, although the same temperature of the atmosphere be 
indicated by the thermometer. 

In the lower ranges of the Cordilleras, farmers also ascribe the 
same injurious consequences to the liglit of the moon, with this dif- 
ference, that according to them the destructive influence continues 
throughout the year ; and it is not unworthy of remark that, in the 
neighborhoods of Paris and of London, the mean temperature of the 
months of April and May (from 50° to 57°, or 58° F.) represents ex- 
actly the invariable climate of those places among the Andes, where 
the effects of frost upon vegetation are particularly to be apprehend- 
ed. M. Arago has shown, that the cold ascribed to the light of the 
moon is nothing but a consequence of the nocturnal radiation, at a 
season when the thermometer in the air is frequently at from 40° to 
43° F. and the sky is clear and calm. At this temperature a plant, 
radiating into space, readily falls below the point of congelation, 
and then the hopes of the gardener and farmer are destroyed. The 
phenomenon takes place particularly in a bright night : and if the 
moon happen to be up when it occurs, the influence is ascribed by 
the vulgar to her light. Were the sky clouded, the principal con- 
dition to radiation would be wanting ; the temperature of objects on 
the surface of the ground would not fall below that of the surround- 
ing medium, and plants would not freeze unless the air itself fell to 
32° F. 

The observation of gardeners, therefore, as M. Arago remarks, 
was not in itself false, it was only incomplete. If the freezing of 
the soft and delicate parts of vegetables in circumstances when the 
air is several degrees above the freezing point, be really due to the 
escape of caloric into planetary space, it must happen that a screen 
placed above a radiating body, so as to mask a portion of the heav- 
ens, will either prevent or at least diminish the amount of the cooling. 
And that this takes place in fact, appears from the beautiful experi- 
ments of Dr. Wells. A thermometer, placed upon a plank of a 
certain thickness, and raised about a yard above the ground, oc- 
casionally indicates in clear and calm weather from 6" to 7° or 8° F. 
less than a second thermometer attached to the lower surface of 
the plank. It is in this way that we explain tire use of mats, of 
layers of straw, in a word, of all those slight coverings which gar- 
deners are so careful to supply during the night to delicate plants at 



METEOROLOGY. NIGHT FROSTS. 489 

certain seasons of the year. Before men were aware that bodies on 
the surface of the ground became colder than the air which sur- 
rounds them during a clear night, the rationale of this practice was not 
apparent ; for it was altogether impossible to conceive that coverings 
so slight could protect vegetables from a low temperature of the air. 

The means indicated, as simple as they are effectual in protecting 
plants in the garden, are rarely applicable in farming, where the 
surface to be preserved is always very extensive. Nevertheless, in 
severe winters, the frost by penetrating the ground would frequently 
destroy the fields sown in autumn, were it not that in high latitudes 
the snow which covers the surface becomes a powerful obstacle to 
excessive cooling, by acting at one and the same time as a covering, 
and as a screen preventing radiation. As a covering, because snow 
is one of tlie worst of conductors, one of those substances which for a 
given thickness opposes the passage of heat most effectually ; it is, 
therefore, an obstacle almost insurmountable to the earth beneath it 
getting into equilibrium in point of temperature with the atmosphere. 
As a screen, l)ecause in sheltering the ground it prevents it from 
undergoing the cooling which it would not fail to experience in clear 
nights by radiation into the open firmament. It is familiarly known 
in many parts of Europe, that the accidental want of the usual cov- 
ering of snow will cause the loss of the autumn-sown crops of grain 
It is on the surface of the snow that the great depression of temper- 
ature takes place ; and the substance being a very bad conductor, 
the earth cools in a much less degree. In the month of February, 
1841, I made some experiments, which show that the snow which 
covers tiie ground acts in the manner of a screen. I had first a 
thermometer upon the snow, the bulb of the instrument being cover- 
ed by from 0.078 to 0.117 of an inch of snow in powder ; second, a 
thermometer, tbe bulb of which was situated completely under the 
layer of snow in contact with the ground ; third, a thermometer 
in the open air, at about 37 or 38 feet above the surface, on the north 
of a building. The layer of snow was about four inches in thickness, 
and had covered a field sown with wheat for a month. The sun 
shone brightly upon the field on those days when my experiments 
were made. 

Feb. 11. Five o'clock in the evening ; the sun has been hidden 
by the mountains for half an hour ; the sky is unclouded, the air very 
calm : thermometer under the snow, 32" F. ; thermometer upon the 
snow, 2!)" F. ; thermometer in the air, 36.3" F. 

Feb. 12. The night very fine, no clouds, the air calm. At seven 
o'clock in the morning, the sun is not yet upon the field : thermom- 
eter under the snow, 26.2" F. ; thermometer upon the snow, 10" F. ; 
thermometer in the air, 26.3" F. 

At half-past five in the evening, the sun behind the mountains : 
thermometer under the snow, 32° F. ; thermometer upon the snow, 
29° F. ; thermometer in the air, 37.5° F. 

Feb. 13. At seven in the morning ; the sky gray, the air slightly 
in motion : thermometer under the snow, 28° F. ; thermometer 
upon the snow, 17° F. ; thermometer in the air, 25° F. 



490 METEOROLOGY. DEW. 

At half-past five in the evening ; the air calm, the sky cloudless, 
the sun already concealed for some time : thermometer under the 
snow, 32" F. ; thermometer upon the snow, 30° F. ; thermometer 
in the air, 40" F. 

Feb. 14. Seven in the morning, wind W., a fine rain falling : 
thermometer under the snow, 32° F. ; thermometer upon the snow, 
32" F. ; thermometer in the air, 35.7° F. 

When we reflect upon the losses occasioned to farmers and mar- 
ket gardeners by frosts that are entirely due to nocturnal radiation 
at seasons of the year when vegetation has already made considera- 
ble progress, we ask eagerly if there be no possible means of guard- 
ing against them. I shall here make known a method imagined and 
successfully followed by South American agriculturists with this 
view. The natives of the upper country in Peru who inhabit the 
elevated plains of Cusco are perhaps more than any other people 
accustomed to see their harvest destroyed by the effects of nocturnal 
radiation. The Incas appear to have ascertained the conditions 
under which frost during the night was most to be apprehended. 
They had observed that it only froze when the night was clear and 
the air calm : knowing consequently that the presence of clouds 
prevented frost, they contrived to make as it were artificial clouds 
to preserve their fields against the cold. When the evening led 
them to apprehend a frost — that is to say, when the stars shone with 
brilliancy, and the air was still — the Indians set fire to a heap of wet 
straw or dung, and by this means raised a cloud of smoke, and so 
destroyed the transparency of the atmosphere from which they had 
so much to apprehend. It is easy in fact to conceive that the 
trans])arency of the air can readily be destroyed by raising a smoke 
in calm weather ; it would be otherwise were there any wind stir- 
ring ; but then the precaution itself becomes unnecessary, for with 
air in motion, with a breeze blowing, there is no reason to apprehend 
frost from nocturnal radiation. 

The practice Ibllowed by the Indians just described is mentioned 
by the Inca Garcillaso de la Vega in his Royal Commentaries of 
Peru. Garcillaso in the imperial city of Cusca, and in his youth, 
had frequently seen the Indians raise a smoke to preserve the fields 
of maize from the frost.* 

The cooling of bodies occasioned by nocturnal radiation is always 
accompanied by a deposite of moisture upon their surface under the 
form of minute globules : this is dew. The ingenious experiments 
of Wells having demonstrated that the appearance of dew always 
follows, never j)rcccdes the fall in temperature of the bodies on 
which it is deposited, the phenomenon cannot be attributed to any 
thing more than a simple condensation of the watery vapor con- 
tained in the air, comj)arable in all respects to that which takes 
place upon the surface of a vessel containing a fluid that is colder 
than the air.f The quantity of moisture dissolved in the atmosphere 

* The pood cfTocts of smoke in preventing nocturnal congelation are also signalized 
by Pliny the njituralist. 

t Arago, Annuaire dos Longitudes, Annftc 1837, p. 100. 



METEOROLOGY. DEW. 491 

is by so much the greater as the temperature is higher. In very 
warm climates the dew is so copious as to assist vegetation essen- 
tially, supplying the place of rain during a great part of the year. 

According to some meteorologists dew is most copious near the 
sea-board of a country ; very little falls in the interior of great con- 
tinents, and indeed is said only to be apparent in the vicinity of lakes 
and rivers.* I cannot agree in any statement of this kind made so 
absolutely. I have never had occasion to see more copious dews 
than those which occasionally fall in the steppes of San Martin to 
the east of the eastern Cordilleras, and at a very great distance 
from the sea ; the dew was so copious that for several nights I found 
it impossible to employ an artificial horizon of black glass in order 
to take the meridian altitude of the stars ; the moment the apparatus 
was exposed there was such a quantity of water deposited on the 
surface that it soon gathered into drops and trickled off. I found it 
necessary to have recourse to mercury to reflect the star under ob- 
servation. During the clear calm nights the turf of these immense 
plains receives a considerable quantity of moisture in the form of 
dew, which materially assists vegetation, and by its evaporation 
tempers the excessive heat of the ensuing day. In tropical coun- 
tries the forests contribute to keep down the temperature. In very 
hot countries it is rare to be out in a cleared spot, when the night 
is favorable to radiation, without hearing drops of water, produced 
by the copiousness of the dew, falling continually from the surround- 
ing trees, so that forests contribute further to produce and to main- 
tain springs by acting as condensers of the watery vapor dissolved 
in the air. I might cite a number of observations upon this point 
which I made in the forest of Cauca. In the bivouac between the 
4th and 5th of July, 1827, the night was magnificent; nevertheless, 
in the forest which began at the distance of a few yards from our 
encampment, it rained abundantly ; by the light of the unclouded 
moon we could see the water running from the branches. 

It is possible that the transpiration from the green parts of the 
trees might have been added to the dew condensed, and so increased 
the intensity of the phenomenon which I have described ; but I 
rather incline to believe that the cooling of the leaves by way of 
radiation had by far the largest share in the production of this dew- 
rain. It is true that of all the leaves which form the crown of a 
tree, those whose surface is exposed and radiate freely into space 
intercept, as would a screen, the radiation of the leaves and branches 
which are not so exposed ; but, as M. de Humboldt has observed, if 
the leaves and branches which crown a tree cool directly by emis- 
sion, those which are situated immediately beneath them by radiating 
towards the lower parts of the leaves which are already cooled a 
greater quantity of heat than they receive, their temperature will 
also necessarily fall, and the cooling will thus be propagated from 
above downward until the whole mass of the tree feels its effects 
[t is thus that the ambient air circulating through the leaves becomes 

• Kaenitz, Meteorolog>'i translated by W. Walker, London, 1844. 



492 METEOROLOGY. KAIN. 

cooled during bright nights, and to judge from the influence wiiich 
forests exert in lowering the temperature of a country, it is enough 
to recollect with M. de Humboldt that by reason of the vast multi- 
plicity of leaves, a tree, the crown of which does not present a hori- 
zontal section of more than about 120 or 130 square feet, actually 
influences the cooling of the atmosphere by an extent of surface 
several thousand times more extensive than this section. 

The proportion of watery vapor which a gas will retain in solu- 
tion is by so much the greater as the temperature of the air is 
higher. All the causes which cool air saturated with watery vapor 
occasion, as we have already seen, the precipitation of a certain 
quantity of moisture. 

When this condensation takes place in the midst of a gaseous 
mass, the precipitated water collects into small floating vesicles, 
which trouble the transparency of the medium that momentarily 
holds them in suspension. Mists, fogs, and clouds are collections 
of these vesicles ; a fog, as a celebrated naturalist said, is a cloud 
in which one is, and a cloud is a fog in which one is not. 

The vesicles of clouds tend towards the earth, like all heavy bo- 
dies, but by reason of their specific lightness the resistance of the 
air which they displace lessens the rapidity of their descent. When 
they are of larger size they coalesce and form drops of water which 
fall with greater celerity. When these drops pass through strata 
of very dry air they undergo . partial evaporation, and this is the 
reason wherefore there is sometimes less rain upon plains than upon 
mountains. In opposite circumstances it is the inverse phenomenon 
that is observed ; the drops increase in size in passing through the 
inferior strata of an atmosphere saturated with moisture, condensing 
vapor in their course. This is what happens most generally. 

In taking a survey of a large amount of observations, meteorolo- 
gists have inferred that the annual quantity of rain varies with the 
latitude ; that, greatest at the equator, it gradually lessens as higher 
northern and southern latitudes are attained ; this is as much as 
saying that the quantity of rain is greater as the temperature of the 
climate is higher. But to this rule there are numerous exceptions ; 
for instance, under the line at Payta on the sea-coast it only rains 
very rarely ; a shower of rain is an event, and when I visited the 
country eighteen years had elapsed since they had had any thing of 
a fall of rain. Local causes have the greatest influence upon the 
fall of rain, so that countries on the same parallel of latitude are far 
Irom being equally distinguished by dryness or humidity. 

It is believed that in Europe it rains more heavily and more fre- 
quently in the day than in the niglit. In the e(]uinoctial regions, at 
least in those parts that I have visited, it would seem tliat the op- 
posite rule held good. Every one in South America allows that it 
rains principally during the niglit, and the observations which I 
made in the neighborhood of Marmato enable me to state that of 
7.874 inches of rain which fell in the month of October, 1.336 inches 
fell in the day, 5.638 inches in the night ; of 8.881 inches which 
fell in the month of November, 0.707 inciies came down in the day, 



METEOROLOGY. RAIN. 493 

8.174 inches in the night ; of 5.934 inches which fell in December, 
0.786 inches fell in the day, 5.148 inches in the night. 

Two series of observations taken in the same country at two sta- 
tions not far from one another, but situated at very different eleva- 
tions, seem to confirm, in reference to the equatorial regions, the 
conclusions of European meteorologists as to the fact that the an- 
nual quantity of rain which falls diminishes as the height above the 
level of the sea increases. They also show that in latitudes which 
do not differ materially, more rain falls where the mean temperature 
is 68" F. than where it is 58° F. 

Marmato lies in N. lat. 5° 27", and 75° U" (] ) W. long., at a 
height of 4676 feet above the level of the sea ; Santa Fe in N. lat. 
4° 36", W. long. 75° 6", at a height of 8692 feet above the level of 
the sea. And while the quantity of rain at the former place amount- 
ed, according to my own observations for 1833, to 60 inches, ac- 
cording to Caldas, in 1807, at the latter there fell but 39.4 inches. 

In temperate climates the quantity of rain that falls varies with 
the seasons. Near the equator, where the temperature remains 
constant throughout the year, the rainy season commences precisely 
at the period when the sun approaches the zenith ; and whenever the 
latitude of a place in the torrid zone where it rains is of the same 
denomination and equal to the declination of the sun, storms occur. 
In such circumstances the sky in the morning is of remarkable pu- 
rity, the air is calm, the heat of the sun insupportable. Towards 
noon clouds begin to show themselves upon the horizon, the hygrom- 
eter does not advance towards dryness as it usually does, it remains 
stationary, or even falls towards extreme humidity. It is always 
after the sun has passed the meridian that the thunder is heard, 
which being preceded by a light wind is soon followed by a deluge 
of rain. In my opinion the permanence or incessant renovation of 
storms in the bosom of the atmosphere is a capital fact, and is con- 
nected with one of the most important questions in the physics of 
our globe, that of the fixation of the azote of the air by organized 
beings. 

The most recent inquiries show dry atmospherical air to consist 
in volume of: 

Oxygen 20.8 

Azote 79.2 

The air contains in addition from 2 to 5 10,000ths of carbonic acid 
gas, and quantities perhaps still smaller of carbureted combustible 
gas. The experiments of M. Theodore de Saussure, as well as 
those of Professor Liebig, have further demonstrated in it traces of 
ammoniacal vapor. 

I have already shown that animals do not directly assimilate the 
azote of the atmosphere. Azote is nevertheless an element essen- 
tial to the constitution of every living being, and is met with indif- 
ferently in either kingdom of nature. If we inquire into the source 
of this principle in connection with the herbivorous tribes of animals, 
we find it as an element in the food which sustains tliem. If we 
next inquire into the immediate origin of the azote which enters 

42 



494 METEOROLOGY. RAIN. 

into the constiiutii.Ti of vegetables, it is discovered in the manure 
which proceeds more especially from animal remains ; for vegeta- 
bles, to thrive, must receive azotized aliment by their roots. We 
thus come to apprehend that plants supply animals with their azote, 
and that these restore it to plants when the term of their existence 
is accomplished ; we are led to discover, in a word, that living or- 
ganic matter derives its azote from dead organic matter. 

This view leads us to conclude that the amount of living matter 
on the surface of the globe is restricted ; that its limits are in some 
sort determined by the quantity of azote in circulation among organ- 
ized beings ; but the question must be viewed from a loftier emi- 
nence, and we must ask what is the origin of the azote which enters 
into the constitution of organic matter considered as a whole'? 

If we now turn to the possible sources or magazines of azote, we 
shall find, setting aside organized beings and their remains, that 
there is in truth hut one, the atmosphere. It is therefore extremely 
probable that all living beings have previously obtained their azote 
from the atmosphere, just as it seems very certain that they have 
thence derived their carbon.* 

Tiie most reasonable supposition in the actual state of science, is 
to consider the ammoniacal vapors diffused through the atmosphere 
as the prime source of the azotized principles of vegetables, and 
then through them of animals ; a consequence of which hypothesis 
would be to assume with Liebig, that carbonate of ammonia existed 
in the atmosphere before the appearance of living things upon the 
face of the earth. 

The phenomena and effects of thunder-storms appear to me cal- 
culated to support this opinion. It is known, in fact, that so often 
as a succession of electrical sparks passes through moist air, there 
is tbrmation and combination of nitric acid and ammonia. Now ni- 
trate of ammonia is one of the constant ingredients in the rain of 
thunder-storms. But nitrate of ammonia, being a fixed salt, cannot 
exist in the atmosphere in the state of gas or vaj)or ; and then it is 
not the nitrate, but the carbonate of ammonia that has been signal- 
ized in the air. In bringing to mind the series of reactions of which 
I have spoken, it is not ditficult to perceive how the nitrate of am- 
monia, precipitated in thunder-showers, and thus brought into contact 
with calcareous rocks, should suiTer decomposition, pass into the 
state of carbonate on the return of fair weather, and become fitted 
to undergo difi'usion in the state of vapor through the atmosphere. 
We should in this way be led to regard the electrical agency, the 
flash of lightning, as the means by which the azote of the atmosphere 
is made fit for assimilation by organized beings. In Europe, wliere 
thunder-storms are rare, an office of so much importance will per- 
haps be accorded reluctantly to the electricity of the clouds ; but in 
tropical countries no ditficulty would probably be felt on the matter. 
In the torrid zone, thunder-storms happen in one place or another 
not only every day, but every hour, and even every minute of every 

* Boiissingault, Annates do Chimic, t Ixxi. 1839. 



METEOROLOGY. THUNDER-STORMS. 495 

hour throughout the year ; so that an observer, placed at th? equator, 
were he endowed with organs of sufficient delicacy, would never 
lose the roll of the thunder. 

As the equator is quitted, the times at which rain falls become 
less specific or periodical. Under the tropics, the rains of thunder- 
storms, which are always the most copious, fall while the sun is in 
the neighborhood of the zenith. In the northern hemisphere, the 
greatest quantity of rain falls during winter ; and at places some- 
what far south on the temperate zone, the summer rain is altogetner 
insignificant. In assuming the number 100 to express the whole 
annual quantity of rain, we should have in 

Madeira. Lisbon. 

Winter 51 40 

Spring 16 34 

Summer 3 3 

Autumn 30 23 

Less rain falls in the eastern parts of Europe than in the western. 
The annual rain, too, is distributed very unequally over the diflierent 
seasons, as has been shown by M. Gasparin in a remarkable paper. 
If we express by 100 the quantity of rain gauged in a year, we 
should have for each season : 

In the west of West of East of Germany. St. Petersburg. 

Englanil. France. Krance. 

Winter 20 23 20 18 14 

Spring 20 13 23 22 18 

Summer 23 25 29 37 37 

Autumn 31 34 28 23 30 

The quantity of rain which falls in the course of a year varies 
considerably according to tiie climate ; to form an idea of the extent 
of these variations, it is enough to notice the results obtained at dif- 
ferent observatories ; but it is less the annual quantity of rain that 
falls, than the way or quantities in which it is distributed over the 
different months of the year, which interests the farmer ; upon this 
distribution, in fact, in many districts, depend the productiveness 
and fertility of the soil. I add a table of the mean quantities of rain 
in inches and lOths, that fall at London in the dilTerent months of 
the year : 

Jan. Feb. March. April. May. June. July. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. 
1.45 1I25 1.17 1.29 1.61 1.72 2.39 1.80 1.84 2.08 2.20 1.72 

^ V. ON THE INFLUENCE OF AGRICULTURAL LABORS ON THE CLIMATE 
OF A COUNTRY IN LESSENING STREAMS, ETC. 

A question of great importance, and that is frequently agitated at 
this time, is, as to whether the agricultural labors of man are influ- 
ential in modifying the climate of a country or not"? Do extensive 
clearings of woods, the draining and drying up of great swamps, 
which certainly influence the distribution of heat during the dilTer- 
ent seasons of the year, also exert an influence on the quantity of 
running water of a country, whether by lessening the quantity of 
rain which falls, or by promoting the more speedy evaporation of 
that which has fallen] 

In some districts it has been held, that the streams which had 



496 INFLUENCE OF AGRICULTURE ON CLIMATE. 

been used as moving powers, have very sensibly diminished. In 
other places, the rivers are said to have shrunk visibly ; and in 
others, springs that were formerly abundant, have almost dried up. 
Observations to this effect appear to have been principally made in 
valleys, surmounted by mountains ; and it is generally asserted, that 
the falling off in the springs and streams, had followed close upon 
the period at which the woods, scattered over the surface of the 
country, were cleared away without any kind of reserve. 

These statements, which may be assumed as facts, seem to indi- 
cate that where the woods have been felled, it rains less than it did 
formerly ; this, indeed, is the general opinion entertained on the 
subject ; and were it admitted, without further examitiation, the 
natural inference from it would be, that the extension of agriculture 
diminishes the annual quantity of rain which falls in a country. But 
at the same time that the facts as stated have been observed, it has 
further been noticed that since the clearing of the surface from for- 
ests, the torrents and rivers which seemed to have lost in amount 
of regular supply of water, had become subject to sudden and extra- 
ordinary risings which had proved the cause of numerous and grave 
calamities. In the same way, springs that are generally all but dry, 
have been seen to burst forth again abundantly after violent storms. 
These latter observations, as may readily be imagined, are of a kind 
that should lead us not lightly to embrace the vulgar opinion, which 
maintains that the cutting down of the woods has had the eflect of 
lessening the mean annual quantity of rain : it is not only not impos- 
sible that this quantity has not varied, but it may even happen that 
the mass of water which passes over the bed of a stream, supposed 
shrunken, is actually the same as ever it was ; the only diflerence 
may be, that now the How is much less regular than it used to be : 
in former times the bed was always and more moderately full ; at 
present it is excessively full at intervals only. It is very possible, 
therefore, that here as elsewhere, occasionullv, the appearance of 
the fact has been taken for the reality. It were very important to 
discover some natural index to a solution of the question at issue : 
whether or not the destruction of the forests that once covered the 
face of a district of country, had had the eflect of lessening the mean 
annual fall of rain ] 

The lakes which are met with in j)lains, and at different levels in 
mountain ranges, seem to me j)eculiarly well calculated to throw 
light on this subject. Lakes may, in fact, be received as natural 
gauges of the running waters of a country. If the mass of the water 
contained in the lakes undergo change in one direction or another, it 
is obvious that this change, and the direction in which it has occur- 
red, will be proclainu;d by the state or mean level of the lake or 
lakes, which will differ for the same reason that it does at different 
seasons of the year, viz. as drought or rain prevails. The mean 
level of the lake or lakes of a district will, therefore, fall, if the 
quantity of water which flows through that district diminishes ; the 
level, on the contrary, will rise, if its streams increase; and it will 
remain stationary if the afllux and efllux of the lake continue un- 



INFLUENCE OF AGRICULTURE ON CLIMATE. 497 

changed. In the following remarks, I shall attach myself particu- 
larly to observations upon lakes which have no outlet, by reason of 
the facility with which any even slight change in the level of these 
must be discovered. I shall not, however, neglect those lakes 
which have an exit by a stream or canal, because I believe that the 
study of these may also lead to accurate enough results ; the only 
point requiring preliminary remark, is the sense in which the words, 
change of level, are to be taken. 

Geologists admit, that the level of the waters upon the surface of 
the globe has everywhere undergone great changes, whether atten- 
tion be directed to the shores of the sea or to those of great inland 
lakes. This fact is universal, and is questioned by none, but great 
diversity of opinion prevails in regard to the cause of the phenome- 
non. Some pretend, that in many cases the change of level is only 
apparent, — that the body of water has not sunk, but that the shores 
have risen ; others, again, maintain that there has been a true dimi- 
nution in the mass of fluid, a true drying up, and that its level has 
actually sunk. I shall not, in this place, enter upon the great geo- 
logical question ; the variations which are there signalized are often 
of vast extent, and involve the supposition of violent catastrophes, 
which, in a general way, were long anterior to the historical epoch. 
I shall only refer to changes of level observed in lakes by our ances- 
tors or contemporaries ; in a word, to facts which have taken place 
under the eyes of men, inasmuch as it is the influence of their ag- 
ricultural labors upon the meteorological state of the atmosphere, 
which I am seeking to appreciate. The facts upon which I shall 
more particularly dwell, were observed in South America ; but I 
shall show that what is true with regard to this continent, is true 
also with reference to any other continent. 

One of the most interesting portions of Venezuela is, undoubtedly, 
the valley d'Aragua. Situated at a short distance from the sea- 
board, possessed of a warm climate, and of a soil fertile beyond ex- 
ample, it combines within itself all the varieties of agriculture that 
belong in peculiar to tropical regions ; on the hillocks which rise in 
the bottom of the valley, are seen fields which bring to mind the 
agriculture of Europe. Wheat succeeds pretty well upon the heights 
which surround La Vittoria. Bounded on the north by a chain of 
hills which run parallel with the sea-board, and to the south by the 
range which separates it from Llanos, the Aragua Valley is limited 
on the east and west by a series of lesser elevations, which shut it 
in completely. In consequence of this peculiar configuration of 
country, the rivers which rise in its interior have no outlet to the 
ocean ; their waters accumulate in the lowest part of the valley, and 
form the beautiful lake Valentia. This lake, which M. de Humboldt 
says exceeds the lake Neufchatel in size, is raised about 1300 feet 
above the level of the sea ; it is about ten leagues in length, and 
about two leagues and a half where it is widest. 

At the time when M. de Humboldt visited the Aragua Valley, the 
inhabitants were struck with the gradual diminution which had been 
going on in the waters of the lake during the last thirty years. It 

42* 



498 INFLUENCE OF AGRICULTURE ON CLIMATE. 

was enough to compare the statements of older writers with its con- 
dition at this time, to obtain conviction that the waters had, in fact, 
very much diminished. Oviedo, for instance, who visited the valley 
frequently towards the end of tlie sixteenth century, says, that the 
town of New Valencia was founded in 1555, at the distance of half a 
league from the lake ; in 1800, M. de Humboldt ascertained that the 
lake was upwards of 549 yards, or upwards of 3| miles, instead of 
about If mile from its banks. 

The appearance of the surface also gives new proof of the fact of 
the recession of the water ; certain hillocks which rise in the plain 
still preserve the title of islands, which, undoubtedly, they formerly 
received with propriety, when they were surrounded by water. The 
land which had been left by the retreat of the lake, soon became 
transformed into beautiful plantations of cotton-trees, bananas, and 
sugar-canes. Buildings which had been erected on the banks were 
left, year after year, further and further from them. In 1796, new 
islets made their appearance. An important military position, a for- 
tress built in 1740, in the Isle de la Cabrera, was then upon a penin- 
sula. Finally, in two islets of granite, M. de Humboldt discovered, 
several yards above the level of the lake, a bed of fine sand, mixed 
with fresh-water shells. These facts, so certain, so unquestionable, 
did not pass without numerous explanations from the wise men of 
the country, who, as if by common consent, fixed upon a subterra- 
nean exit for the waters of the lake. M. de Humboldt, after the 
most careful examination of all the circumstances, did not hesitate 
to ascribe the diminution of the waters of the lake Valencia to the 
extensive clearings which had been effected in the course of half a 
century in the Aragua valley. " In felling the trees which covered 
tlie crowns and slopes of the mountains," says this celebrated 
traveller, " men in all climates seem to be bringing upon future 
generations two calamities at once — a want of fuel and a scarcity 
of water."* 

In the year 1800, the population of this favored valley, where the 
cultivation of indigo, of cotton, of cocoa, and the cane had made im- 
mense progress, was as dense as it was in the most thickly popula- 
ted districts of England or France, and every one was delighted 
with the appearance of comfort that prevailed in the numerous villa- 
ges of this industrious country. 

Twenty-five years after M. de Humboldt, I explored in my turn 
the Valley d'Aragua, having fixed my residence in the little town of 
Maracaibo. The inhabitants had now remarked that for several 
years, not only had the lake ceased to diminish, but that it had even 
risen very perceptibly. Some fields that were formerly covered with 
cotton plantations were now submerged. The Isles de las Nuevas 
Aparacidas, which had risen from the waters in 1796, had again be- 
come shoals dangerous to navigation ; the tongue of earth, De la 
Cabrera, on the north side of the valley, had become so narrow that 
the slightest rise in the water of the lake covered it completely ; a 

* Humboldt, vol. v. p. 173. 



INFLUENCE OF AGRICULTURE ON CLIMATE. 499 

continuous N.E. wind was sufficient to flood the road which led 
from Maracaibo to New Valencia ; in short, the fears which the in- 
habitants of the lake had entertained for so long a period had entirely 
changed their nature ; they were now no longer afraid of the lake dry- 
ing up ; they saw with dismay that if the water continued to rise as 
it had done lately, it would in no long space of time have drowned 
some of the most valuable estates, &c. Those who had explained 
the diminution of the lake by supposing subterraneous canals, now 
hastened to close them up in order to find a cause for the rise in the 
level of the water. 

In the course of the last twenty-two years important political 
events had transpired. Venezuela no longer belonged to Spain ; the 
peaceful valley d'Aragua had been the theatre of many a bloody con- 
test ; war to the knife had desolated this beautiful country and deci- 
mated its inhabitants. On the first cry of independence raised, a 
great number of slaves found freedom by enlisting under the banners 
of the new republic ; agricultural operations of any extent were 
abandoned, and the forest, which makes such rapid progress in the 
tropics, had soon regained possession of the surface which man had 
won from it by something like a century of sustained and painful 
toil. With the increasing prosperity of the valley many of the prin- 
cipal tributaries to the lake had been turned aside to serve as means 
of irrigation, so that the beds of some of the rivers were absolutely 
dry for more than six months in the year. At the period which I 
now refer to, the water was no longer used in this way, and the beds 
of the rivers were full. Thus with the growth of agricultural indus- 
try in the Valley d'Aragua, when the extent of cleared surface was 
continually on the increase, and when great farming establishments 
were multiplied, the level of the water sunk ; but by and by, during 
a period of disasters, happily passing in their nature, the process of 
clearing is arrested, the lands formerly won from the forest are in 
part restored to it, and then the waters first cease to fall in their le- 
vel, and by and by siiow an unequivocal disposition to rise. 

I shall now, without, however, quitting America, carry my read- 
ers into a district where the climate is analogous to that of Europe, 
where the surface is occupied by immense fields, covered with the 
cereals as with us. I speak of the table-lands of New Granada, of 
those valleys raised from 10,000 to 13,000 and 14,000 feet above 
the level of the sea, in which the mean temperature throughout the 
year ranges from 58" to about 62° Fahr. Lakes are frequent in the 
Cordilleras ; and it would be easy for me to describe a great num- 
ber ; I shall, however, confine myself to those which became subjects 
of observation in former times. 

The village of Ubate is now situated in the neighborhood of two 
lakes. Some seventy years ago these two lakes formed but one ; 
the old inhabitants saw the water shrinking and new fields pre- 
senting themselves year after year. At this present time fields of 
wheat of extraordinary luxuriance occupy levels that were com- 
pletely inundated 30 years ago. 

It is enough indeed to perambulate the neighborhood of Ubate, 



500 METEOROLOGY. 

to consult the old sportsmen of the country, and to refer to the 
annals of the various parishes, to be satisfied that extensive forests 
have been cut down in the whole of the surrounding country ; the 
clearing, in fact, still continues ; and it is certain that the recession 
of tiie waters, although much slower than it was in former times, has 
not yet entirely ceased. 

A lake, situated in the same valley, to the east of Ubate, deserves 
our particular attention. By means of barometric measurements, 
made with e.xtreme care, I found that this lake had precisely the 
same level as that of Ubate. Nearly two centuries ago, it was vis- 
ited by Piedrahita, Bishop of Panama, an author of great accuracy, 
to whom we owe the history of the conquest of New Granada. He 
states this lake to be ten leagues in length, by three leagues in 
breadth ; but Dr. Roulin having had occasion, a few years ago, to 
make a plan of the lake, he found it a league and a half in length, by 
one league in breadth ; my own impression is, that at the time 
Piedrahita wrote, there was but a single lake, extending all the way 
from Ubate to Zimijaca, not two lakes as at present, a supposition 
which would take away every thing like exaggeration from the state- 
ment of Piedrahita. But the fact of the retreat of the waters of 
tiiese lakes is unquestioned ; the inhabitants of Zimijaca all know 
that the village was founded close to the lake, whereas, at the pres- 
ent lime, it is nearly a league from its banks. Formerly, there was 
no difficulty in obtaining all the building timber that was wanted ; 
the mountains which rose from the valley on either hand were cov- 
ered up to a certain height with the trees proper to these cold re- 
gions ; the oak of the Andes abounded; numerous myrcias were 
also in existence, from which abundance of wax was obtained : at 
the present time these mountains are almost stripped of their trees, 
an event mainly brought about by the eagerness to procure fuel in 
manufacturing salt from the sj)rings of Taosa and Enemocon. 

To tiiese authentic facts, which I could multiply and support by 
many others of a similar kind, it may be replied, that the diminution 
of tiic water, incontestable as it is, might perhaps have taken place 
without the clearing away of the forests. It may indeed be main- 
tained, that the drying up of the waters is owing to a totally diller- 
eiit cause, altogether unknown to us ; that it must be ranked among 
the numerous phenomena, the reality of which we perceive, but 
without being able to render any account of their cause. 

I cannot, in the instance last quoted, as in that of the lake of Va- 
lencia, refer to any increase of tiie lake connected with the suspen- 
sion of agriculture, or the reappearance of the forest. I might, 
however, adduce in favor of the opinion which I defend, the slow- 
ness with which the decrease in the lakes of the valley of Ubate has 
lately gone on, and since the felling of trees in the neighborhood 
has almost entirely ceased. Extensive plots of fertile ground are 
now no longer left dry and available to the husliandman by the re- 
treat of the lake ; he already begins to think of means for obtaining 
by artifice that which nature, assisted by the clearing of the country, 
presented him with in former times. In the year 1826 tliere was a 



METEOROLOGY. 501 

speculation on foot for draining the valley completely by cutting a 
canal and letting off the water. Further proof of the fact which 1 
am urging is obtained in another way. It is not difficult to show, 
that lakes in the immediate vicinity of those that have shrunk most 
remarkably, but around which no destruction of the forest has taken 
place, have undergone no change in their level. The lake of Tota, 
situated at no great distance from the valley of Ubate, at an eleva- 
tion that must approach 13,000 feet above the level of the sea, in a 
region where vegetation has almost entirely disappeared, has pre- 
served its pristine level unaltered. The lake is nearly circular ; 
and Piedrahita, in 1542, gives it two leagues in breadth. It is sub- 
ject to violent storms, which render its navigation dangerous ; and 
even travelling along its banks, from the particular circumstances in 
which the road is situated, with the lake on one hand and a perpen- 
dicular cliff upon the other, is not without risk. In 1652, the road 
passed as it does at present, the water laving the foot of the same 
rocks, and its level having suffered no change, any more than the 
sterile country which surrounds it. 

I shall conclude what I have to say on the lakes of South America 
by speaking of that of Quilatoa, because it has been made the subject 
of accurate observations sufficiently remote from one another — 1740 
and 1831. 

Living at Latacunga, a town situated at no great distance from 
Cotopaxi, the traveller is sure to hear of the wonders of the Laguna 
da Quilatoa. From time to time this lake, it is said, casts forth 
flames which set fire to the shrubs and withered grass that grow 
upon its banks, and frequent detonations are heard, the sound of 
which extends to a great distance. M. de la Condamine, in 1738, 
visited this lake, which he found of a circular form, and about 1278 
feet in diameter ; on the 28th November, 1831,1 also visited the 
Lake of Quilatoa. It cannot be better compared to any thing than 
to the crater of a volcano filled with water ; I found it nearly 13,000 
feet above the level of the sea, in the cold region, therefore ; and 
indeed it is surrounded with immense pastures ; but the information 
which I obtained from the shepherds in the neighborhood of the Lake 
of Quilatoa, dissipated all that was marvellous in its history ; they 
had never seen any flames issue from its bosom, they had never 
heard any detonations ; in short, I found the lake as M. de la Con- 
damine appears to have found it, every thing having remained for 
nearly a century without change. 

The study of the lakes which are so common in Asia, would 
probably supply conclusions similar to those deduced from observa- 
tions made in South America, viz., that the waters which irrigate a 
country diminish as the forests are cleared away, and as agriculture 
extends. The recent labors of M. de Humboldt, which have thrown 
so much new light upon this quarter of the world, appear to leave 
no doubt upon the subject. After having shown that the system of 
the Altai is about to lose itself by a succession of slopes in the 
steppes of Kirgiz, and that consequently the Ural chain is not con- 
nected with that of the Altai, as was generally believed, this celebrated 



502 METEOROLOGY. 

geographer shows, that precisely in the situation where the Alghinic 
mountains are usually set down, a remarkable region of lakes com- 
mences, which extend into the plains that are traversed by the Icliim, 
the Omsk, and the Obi.* It would appear that these numerous 
lakes are remainders as it were of an immense sheet of water, which 
formerly covered the whole of the country, and which had become 
divided into so many particular lakes by the configuration of the 
surface. In crossing the steppe of Earaba, in his way from Tobolsk 
to Baraoul, M. de Humboldt perceived everywhere that the drying 
up of waters increases rapidly under the influence of the cultivation 
of the soil. 

Europe also possesses its lakes ; and we have still to examine 
them from the particular point of view which engages us. M. de 
Saussure, in his first inquiries in regard to the temperature of the 
lakes of Switzerland, examined those which are situated at the foot 
of the first line of the Jura. The Lake of Neufch&tel is eight 
leagues in length, and its greatest breadth does not e.\ceed two 
leagues. On visiting it, Saussure was struck with the extent which 
this lake must formerly have possessed ; for, as he says, the ex- 
tensive level and marshy meadows which terminate it on the south- 
west, had unquestionably been covered with water at a formex 
period. 

The Lake of Bienne is three leagues long and one broad ; it is 
separated from the Lake of Neufchatel by a succession of plains that 
were probably inundated. 

Lake Moral is also separated from the Lake of Neufchitel by low 
and level marshes, which beyond all question were formerly sub- 
merged. Unquestionably, adds Saussure, the three great lakes of 
Neufchatel, Eienne, and Morat, were formerly connected, and formed 
one great sheet of water. f 

In Switzerland, as in America and Asia, the old lakes, those that 
may be spoken of under the title of the primitive lakes, and which 
occupied the bottoms of the valleys when the country was unculti- 
vated and wild, have become divided, and now form a variable num- 
ber of smaller and independent lakes. I shall wind up the present 
subject by referring to the observations of Saussure upon the Lake 
of Geneva, which may be looked upon as the starting point of the 
admirable works of this distinguished philoso])her. 

Saussure admits, that at an epoch long anterior to the times of 
history, the mountains which surround this lake were themselves 
submerged ; a great catastrophe let olf this inunense collection of 
water, and by and by the current possessed no more than the bottom 
of the valley ; the Lake of Geneva was formed. 

In merely considering the moimmcnts lelt by man, it is impossible 
to doubt that within 1200 or 1300 years the waters of the Lake of 
Geneva have gradually fallen in their level. It is evidently upon 
the levels which have thus been left that the quarter de Rive, and 
the lower streets of the city of Geneva have been built. This de- 

♦ Humboldt, Fragmcns .Vsisiliques, t. i. p. 40-50. 
t Saussure, Voyage clans Ics Alpes, t. ii. chap. 6. 



METEOROLOGY. 503 

pression of the surface, continues Saussure, is not merely the effect 
of any deepening of the bed of the Rhone, by which the lake is dis- 
charged ; it has also been produced by a diminution in the quantity 
of water which flows into it. 

The conclusions which it seems legitimate to draw from the ob- 
servations of Saussure are, that in the course of from 1200 to 1300 
years the quantity of running water has sensibly diminished in the 
districts around the Lake of Geneva. No one will, I apprehend, 
deny that in this long period there have not been extensive clear- 
ings of forest lands in Switzerland, and a continual increase in the 
extent of cultivated land in this beautiful country. Here, conse- 
quently, as elsewhere, an attentive examination of the levels of the 
lakes leads us to conclude, that where extensive clearings from for- 
est have been effected, where agriculture has extended, that there 
has in all probability been diminution of the running waters which 
irrigate the surface ; while in those districts where no change has 
been effected, the amount of running stream does not appear to have 
undergone any variation. 

The effect of forests considered in this pomt of view would there- 
fore be to keep up the amount of the waters which are destined for 
mills and canals; and next to prevent the rain-water from collecting 
and flowing away with too great rapidity. That a soil covered with 
trees is further less favorable to evaporation than ground that has 
been cleared, is a truth that all will probably admit without discus- 
sion. To be aware that it is so, it is enough to have travelled, a 
short time after the rainy season, upon a road which traverses in 
succession a country that is free from forests, and one that is thickly 
wooded. Those parts of the road that pass through the unencum- 
bered country are found hard and dry, while those that traverse the 
wooded districts are wet, muddy, and often scarcely passable. In 
South America, more perhaps than anywhere else, does the obsta- 
cle to evaporation from a soil thickly shaded with forests, strike the 
traveller. In the forests the humidity is constant, it exists long after 
the rainy season has passed ; and the roads that are opened tlirough 
them remain through the whole year deeply covered with mire : the 
only means known of keeping forest ways dry, is to give them a 
width of from 260 to 330 feet, that is to say, to clear the country in 
their course. 

If once the fact is admitted that running streams are diminished 
in size by the effect of felling the forests and the extension of agri- 
culture, it imports us to examine whether this diminution proceeds 
from a less quantity of rain, or from a greater amount of evapora- 
tion, or whether perchance it may be owing to the practice of irrigation. 

I set out with the principle that it must be next to impossible tcr 
specify the precise share which each of these different causes has 
in the general result ; I shall, nevertheless, endeavor to appreciate 
them in a summary way. The discussion will have gained some- 
thing if it be proved that there may be diminution of running streams 
in consequence of clearing off the forests alone, without the whole 
of the causes being presumed to act simultaneously. 



504 METEOROLOGY. 

With regard to irrigation, it is necessary to distinguish between 
that case in which an extensive farm has been substituted for an im- 
penetrable forest, and tliat in which an arid soil, which never sup- 
ported wood, has been rendered productive by the industry of man. 
In the first case it is very probable that irrigation will have contri- 
buted but little to the diminution in the mass of running water ; it 
may readily be imagined that the quantity of water used up by a 
dense forest will equal, at all events, if not exceed, that which will 
be required by any of the vegetables which human industry substi- 
tutes for it. In the second case, that is to say, where a great extent 
of waste country has been brought under cultivation, there will evi- 
dently be consumption of water by the vegetation which has been 
fostered upon the surface ; agricultural industry will thus tend to 
diminish the quantity of water which irrigates a country. It is ex- 
tremely probable that it is to a circumstance of this kind that we 
must ascribe the diminution of the lakes which receive so large a 
proportion of the running streams of the north of Asia. It is al- 
most unnecessary to add, that in circumstances of this kind the effect 
which is due to the simple evaporation of rain-water is not increased ; 
the loss by this means must be rather less, because from a surface 
covered with plants evaporation takes place more slowly than from 
one that is devoid of vegetation. 

In the considerations which I have presented upon the lakes of 
Venezuela, of New Granada, and of Switzerland, the diminution may 
be directly ascribed to a less mean annual quantity of rain ; but it 
may with equal reason be maintained to be a simple consequence of 
more rapid evaporation. 

There are, in fact, a variety of circumstances under the influence 
of which the diminution of running streams can be shown to be con- 
nected with more active evaporation. I shall confine myself to the 
mention of two particidar instances, one noticed by M. Desbassyns 
de Richemond, in the Island of Ascension ; the other is from obser- 
vations by myself, and is among the number of facts which I regi.s- 
tered during my residence for several years at the mines of Mar- 
mato. 

In the Island of Ascension there was an excellent spring situated 
at the foot of a mountain originally covered with wood; this spring 
became scanty and dried up after the trees which covered the moun- 
tain had been felled. The loss of the spring was rightly ascribed to 
the cutting down of the timber. The mountain was therefore plant- 
ed anew, and a few years afterwards the spring reappeared by de- 
grees, and by and by flowed with its former abimdance. 

The metalliferous mountain of Marmato is situated in the province 
of Popayan, in the midst of immense forests. The stream along 
which the mining works are established is formed by the junction of 
several small rivulets which take their rise in the table-land of San 
Jorge. The country which overlooks the establishment is thickly 
wooded. 

In 1826, when I visited the mines for the first time, Marmato con- 
sisted of a few miserable cabins, inhabited by negro slaves. In 



TVIETEOHOLOGY. 505 

1830, when I quitted the country, Marmato had the most flourishing 
appearance ; it was covered with workshops, it had a foundry of 
gold, machinery for grinding and amalgamating the ores, &c., and a 
free population of nearly three thousand inhabitants. It may be 
readily imagined, that in the course of these four years an immense 
quantity of timber had been cut down, not only for the construction 
of machinery and of houses, but as fuel, and for the manufacture of 
charcoal. For facility of transport, the felling had principally gone 
on upon tlie table-land of San Jorge. But the clearing had scarcely 
been eifected two years before it was perceived that the quantity of 
water for the supply of the machinery had notably diminished. The 
volume of water had been measured by the work done by the ma- 
chinery, and actual gauging at different times showed the progressive 
diminution of the water. The question assumed a serious aspect, 
because at Marmato any diminution in the quantity of the water, 
which is the moving power, would be of course attended with a pro- 
portional diminution in the quantity of gold produced. Now, in the 
Island of Ascension, and at Marmato, it is highly improbable that 
any fnerely local and limited clearing away of the forest should have 
had such an influence upon the constitution of the atmosphere as to 
cause a variation in the mean annual quantity of rain which falls in 
the country. More than this, as soon as the diminution of the 
stream at Marmato was ascertained, a pluviometer, or rain-gauge, 
was set up, and in the course of the second year of observation a 
larger quantity of rain was gauged than in the first year, although 
the clearing had been continued ; still there was no appreciable in- 
crease in the size of the running stream. 

A couple of years of observation are unquestionably insufficient to 
show any definitive variation in the annual quantity of rain that falls. 
But the observations made at Marmato still establish the fact that 
the mass of running water had diminished in spite of the larger quanti- 
ty of rain which fell. It is therefore probable that local clearings of 
forest land, even of very moderate extent, cause springs and rivu- 
lets to shrin' , and even to disappear, without the effect being ascri- 
bable to any diminution in the amount of rain that falls. 

We have still to inquire, whether extensive clearings of the 
forest — clearings which embrace a whole country — cause any dimi- 
nution in the quantity of rain that falls. Unfortunately, the observa- 
tions which we have upon the quantity of rain which falls in par- 
ticular districts, are only of sufficient antiquity and accuracy in 
Europe to be worthy of any confidence, and there the soil was cleared 
before observation, in the generality of instances, began. 

The United States of America, where the forests are disappearing 
with such rapidity, will probably one day afford elements for the 
complete and satisfactory solution of the question, whether or not 
the cutting down of forests causes any diminution in the quantity of 
rain which falls in the course of the year. 

In studying the phenomena accompanying the fall of rain in the 
tropics, I have come to a conclusion which I have already made 
known to many observers. My own opinion is, that the felling of 

43 



506 METEOROLOGY. 

forests over a large extent of country has always the effect of less- 
ening the mean annual quantity of rain. 

It has long been said, that in equinoctial countries the rainy sea- 
son returns each year with astonishing regularity. There can be 
no doubt of the general accuracy of this observation, but the mete- 
orological fact must not be announced as universal and admitting of 
no exception ; the regular alternation of the dry and rainy season is 
as perfect as possible in countries which present an extreme variety 
of territory. Thus, in a country whose surface is covered with forests 
and rivers and lakes, with mountains and plains, and table-lands, the 
periodical seasons are quite distinct. But it is by no means so where 
the surface is more uniform in its character. The return of the 
rainy season will be much less regular if the soil be in general dry 
and naked ; or if extensive agricultural operations take the place of 
the primeval forest ; if rivers are less common, and lakes less fre- 
quent. The rains will then be less abundant ; and such countries 
will be exposed, from time to time, to droughts of long continuance. 
If, on the contrary, thick forests cover almost the whole of the terri- 
tory, if its rivulets and rivers be numerous, and agriculture be limited 
in extent, irregularity in the seasons will then take place, but in a 
different way ; the rains will prevail, and in some seasons they will 
become as it were incessant. 

The continent of America presents us, on the largest scale, with 
two regions placed in the same conditions as to temperature, but in 
which we successively encounter the circumstances which are most 
-favorable to the formation and fall of rain in one case, and to its 
absence in the other. 

Setting out from Panama, and proceeding towards the south, wc 
encounter the B^y of Cupica, the provinces of San Bonavcntura, 
Choco, and Esmeraldas ; in this country, covered with thick forests 
and intersected with a multitude of streams, the rains are almost 
incessant ; in tha interior of Choco, scarcely a day passes without 
rain. Beyond Tumbez, towards Payta, an order of things entirely 
different commences : the forests have entirely disappeared, the soil 
is sandy, agriculture scarcely exists, and here rain is almost un- 
known. When I was at Payta, the inhabitants informed me that it 
had not rained for seventeen years ! The same want of rain is 
common in the whole of the country which surrounds the desert of 
Sechura, and extends to Lima ; in these countries rain is as rare as 
trees are. 

In Choco, where the soil is thickly covered with trees, it rains 
almost continually ; and on the coasts of Peru, where the soil is 
sandy, without trees, and devoid of verdure, it never rains ; and 
this, as I have said, under a climate which enjoys the same tempera- 
ture, and whose general features and distance from the mountains 
are nearly the same. Piura is not more remote from the Andes of 
Assuay than are the moist plains of Choco from the Western Cor- 
dillera. 

The facts which have now been laid before the reader seem to 
authorize me to infer — 



METEOROLOGY. 507 

1st. That extensive destruction of forests lessens tlie quantity of 
running water in a country. 

2d. That it is impossible to say precisely whether this diminution 
is due to a less mean annual quantity of rain, or to more active 
evaporation, or to these two effects combined. 

3d. That the quantity of running water does not appear to have 
suffered any diminution or change in countries which have known 
nothing of agricultural improvement. 

4th. That independently of preserving running streams, by oppo- 
sing an obstacle to evaporation, forests economize and regulate their 
flow. 

5th. That agriculture established in a dry country, not covered 
with forests, dissipates an additional portion of its running water. 

6th. That clearings of forest land of limited extent may cause 
the disappearance of particular»springs, without our being therefore 
authorized to conclude that the mean annual quantity of rain has 
been diminished. 

7th, and lastly. That in assuming the meteorological data collect- 
ed in intertropical countries, it may be presumed that clearing off 
the forests does actually diminish the mean annual quantity of rain 
which falls.* 

* These meteorological observations arc highly interesting, and worthy of every 
consideration. That iinforestiug a country makes it absolutely drier, seems unques- 
tionable ; but whether that be in consequence of less rain falling, or of that which 
falls going further, making more show, cannot be easily determined. It does not seem 
very legitimate to decide, that because a country is covered with wood, therefore it is 
wet: the converse of that propoiition appears much more probable — viz., that because 
a country is wet, therefore it is covered with trees. There is one part of the ocean 
which is called by mariners "The Rains ;" because it rains there almost ceaselessly, 
as it does in the province of Choco : but " The Rains" has no forests to account for 
its dripping sky. Did that region consist of dry land instead of salt-water, then doubt- 
less its surface would be covered, as that of Choco is, with an impenetrable forest. 
The subject is adverted to here, however, not to discuss the general question, but to 
throw out the suggestion that under the hand of man, the soil and even the climate of 
our immense Australian possessions might possibly be improved. Drought is the 
grand enemy of Australian settlers ; and the country is generally barren of wood. 

Governors, district governments, and farmers, and all who are interested in the pros- 
perity of the colony, surely ought to encourage, by every possible means, the growth 
of the taller trees and shrubs that are indigenous to the country. 

Expeditions might be made once or twice a year, at the proper season, for scattering 
or planting the seeds of these trees or shrubs. Could every knoll within" a hundred 
miles of Sidney be seen crowned with a thick screen of leafy trees, there can be little 
doubt but that the rain which falls would be economized ; and tfiat the beds of the 
rivers, instead of being dry for eight or nine months, would be occupied all the year 
round by at least a moderate stream of water. — Enq. £d. 



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volinne, 12n\o., 75 cents. 

EXTRACT FnOM PREFACE. 

" Tho Holy Scripltires contain many [)a3sagcs full of importance and beauty, t<ut not generally 
uiiilorstood, because tlu^y contain allusions ro rniinners and customs, familiar inileed lo tliosc towhoiv 
Ihcy were originally addressed, but imperfectly known to us. In order to obviate tbis difficulty 
this voltune is now jiresented to tlie pul)lic, consisting of extracts from the narratives of tr.ivo. 
lers who have recorded the customs of the oriental nations, from whom we IcMrn that some usagei 
were retained among them to this day, such as existed at the times when the Scriptures were 
written, and that their mtinners are in many instances little changed since the patriarchal times. 
The compiler of this volume trusts that it may be the means, under God's providence, of leading 
unlearned readers to a more general acquaintance with Eastern customs, and assist them to a 
clearer perception of the propriety and beauty of the illustrations so often drawn from them in the 
Bible." 

BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER; 

And Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies ot 
the Church, according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
United States of America, together with the Psalter or Psalms of David. 
lUnstraled with six steel engravings, rubricated, ISmo. size, in various 
bindings. 

Morocco, extra gilt leaves, $2 2.5. With clasp, do., $3 00. Imitation of Morocco, gilt 
leaves, S' 50. Plain do., $1 00. Without rubrics, in Morocco, extra, S'- "0. Imitation do., 
$1 2,5. Slieep, plain, 37 1-2 cents. It may also bo had in rich silk velvet binding, mounted with 
gold, gilt borders, clasp, &c., price $8 00. 

A very superior edition, printed in large type, from the new authorized edition, is nearly 
ready. It will be embellished with choice steel engravings from designs by Overbook. 

BOONE— ADVENTURES OF DANIEL BOONE, 

'J'he Kentucky Rifleman. By the author of " Uncle Philip's Conversations." 
One volume, 18mo. 37 1-2 cents. 
Forming one of the series of "A Library for my Young Countrymen." 

" It is an excellent narrative, written in a plnin, familiar style, and sets forth the character and 
wild adventures of the hero of the Kentucky wilderness in a very attractive light. The boys will 
all bo in an agony to read it." — Com. Ada. 

BOYS' MANUAL. 

Comprising a Summary View of the Studies, Accomplishments, and Princi- 
ples of Conduct, best suited for promoting Respectability and Success in 
Life. 1 vol. Idnio. 50 cents. 

BRADLEY.-FAMILY AND PARISH SERMONS. 

Preached at Clapham and Glasbury. By the Rev. Charles Bradley. From 
tlie seventh London edition, two volumes in one,8vo. $1 25. 

PRACTICAL SERMONS 

For every Sunday throughout tlie year and princij)al holydays. Two volumea 

of English edition in one 8vo $1 50. 

j)::^' 'I'ho above two volumes may bo bound together in one. Price §2 50. 

The Sermons of this Divine are much admired for thuir plain, yet chaste and elegant style; 
tbry will be found admirably adapted for family reading and preaching, where no pastor is luckted, 
Kernnimendations miiiht bo given, if space would admit, from several of our Bishops and Clcrgy- 
bIbo tVom Ministers of various diinominations. 

The fidlowirg arc a few of the EPTlisb and American critical opinions of their merit: — 

" Bradley's ttylo is sententious, pithy, and colloquial, lie is simple without being quainti 
Sjd ho almost holds conversation with his hearers, without descending from the dignity of the 
nacrod chair." — Kclrctic Rrview. 

" Wo earnestly desire that every pulpit may ever be the vehicle of discourses as judicious ana 
practical, as scriptural and devout, as these." — Christian Observer. 

" Tho stylo is so simple that the most unlearned can understand them ; the mottor so instrac 
»ive that tho best informed can loam something ; tho spirit so fervent that llie raos4 engaged 
Christian can be animated and warmed by tboir perusal "^-Christian fVitnett. 

A 



^tppleton » i iogue of Valuable Publications 



BURNET— THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION 

or llie Church of England, by Gilbert Burnet, D. D., late Lord Bishop oi 

Salisbury — with the Collection of Records and a copious Index, revise. 

and corrected, with additional Notes and a Preface, by the Rev. E 

Nares, D. D., late Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford, 

Illustrated with a Frontispiece and twenty-three engraved Portraits, form 

ing four elegant 8vo. volumes. $8 00. 

A cheap edition is printed, containing the History in three vols, without the 

Reconls — which form the fourth vol. of the above. Price, in boards, $2 50. 

To tho student either of civil or religious history, no epoch can be of more importance than 

that of the Reformation in Englund. The History of Bishop Burnet is one of the most celebrated 

and bv far the most frequently quoted of any that has been written of this great event. Upon tha 

origintil publication of tlie first volume, it was received in Great Britain with the loudest and 

Biijst extravagant encomiums. The author received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, 

and was requested by them to continue the work. In continuing it, he had the assistance of the 

most learned and eminent divines ofliistime; and ho confesses his indebtedness for important 

aid to Lloyd, Tillotson,and Stillinglleet, three of the greatest of England's Bishops. 

The present edition of this great work lias been edited with laborious care by Ur. Nares, who 
professes to have corrected important errors into which the author fell, and to have made such 
improvements in the order of the work as will render it far more useful to tho reader or historical 
Btudent. Preliminary explanations, full and sufficient to the clear understai'ding of the author, 
arc- given, and marginal references are made throughout the book, so as greatly to facilitate and 
tender accurate its consultation. It will of course find a place in every theologian's libraiy — and 
will, by no means, we trust, be confined to that comparatively limited sphere. — JV. Y. Tribune. 

BURNET— AN EXPOSITION OF THE XXXIX ARTICLES 

Ofthe Church of England. By Gilbert Burnet, D. D, late Bishop of Salisbury. 
With an Appendix, containing the Augsburg Confession, Creed of Pope 
Pius IV., &.C. Revised and corrected, with copious Notes and Additional 
References, by the Rev. James R. Page, A. M. One handsome 8vo. vol- 
ume. $2 00.' 
The editor has given to our clergy and our students in theology an edition of this work, which 
must necessarily supersede every other, and we feel he deserves well at the hands ofthe Church, 
which he has so materially served. — Church of England Quarterly Review. 

BURNS— THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

Of Kobert Burns, with Explanatory and Glossarial Notes, and a Life of the 
Author, by James Curric, M. D., illustrated with six steel engravings, one 
volume, IGmo. $1 25. 
Forming one ofthe series of " Cabinet Edition of Standard British Poets." 
Tills is the most complete American edition of Burns. It contains the whole of the poetry com- 
prised in the edition bittly edited by Cunningham, as well as some additional pieces ; and snch 
notes have been added as are calculated to illustrate the manners and customs of Scotland, bo ai 
to render the whole more intelligible to the English reader. 

He <uves nothing to the poetry of other lands — he is the offspring ofthe soil : he is as natural 
to Scotlanil as the heath is to her hills — his variety is equal to his originality; his humour, hii 
gaypty, his tenderness and hi.'t pathos, come all in a breath ; they come freely, for they come of 
their own accord ; the contrast is never offensive ; the comic slides easily into the serious, tha 
torious into tlie tender, and the tender into the palhctic. — Jillan Cunningham. 

CAMERON— THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER: 

A Tale (if Humble Life, by Mrs. Cameron, author of" Emma and Her Nurse," 
" the Two Mothers," etc , etc., one volume, l8mo., frontispiece. 37 1-2 cts. 

We welcome, in this little volume, a valuable addition to the excellent series of " Talea for 
the People and their Children." The story conveys high moral truths, in a most attractive form 
— HuiiVs Merchant's Mag. 

CARLYLE— ON HEROES, HERO WORSHIP, 

And the Heroic in History. Six Lectures, reported with Emendations and Ad- 
i. ditions, by Thomas Carlyle, author of the " French Revolution," "Sartor 
\ Resartus," &.C. Elegantly printed in one vol. 12mo. Second edition. $1. 

CHILO'S DELIGHT; 

A. Gift for the Young. Edited by a lady. One volutne small 4to. Embel* 
lished with six steel Engravings coloured in the most attractive style. 

This is the gem of the soason. In style of enilicllishment and originality of matter, it itando 
«iin«. W» cordially recommend the volume to our juvenile friends. — U. S. Qantte. 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications 

CHURTON.— THE EARLY ENGLISH CHURCH; 

Or, Christian History of Englaml in early Britisii, Saxon, and A'orinan Times. 
I5y the Rev. Edward Chnrlon, iM. A ^Y'nh a Preface by t!ie Right Rev 
IJisliop Ives. One voJ. iGrno. $1 00. 

The following (Jeliglitful pages place bcforn iia somo of tlie choicest examples — both clerical 
and lay— of the true Christian spirit in the KARLY EN'GLIPII CHURCH. In truth, those pagef 
■re crowded with weighty lessons. * * * Eztract from KiUlor's Prifacc. 

CLARKE.— SCRIPTURE PROMISES 

Mnder their proper lieads, representing the Blessings Promised, the Duties to 
which Promises are made. By Samuel Clarke, D. D. Miniature size, 
37 1-2 cents. 

In this edition every passage of Scripture has been compared and verified. The volume ii 
like an arranged museum of gems, and precious stones, and pearls of inestimable value. Tli« 
divine promises comprehend a rich and endless vaiiety. — Dr WariUait. 

COOLEY— THE AMERICAN IN EGYPT. 

vVith Rambles through Arabia-Potraea and the Holy Land, during the years 
1339-40. By James Ewing Cooley. Illustrated" with numerous steel En 
gravings, also Etchings and Designs by Johnston. One handsome volume, 
octavo, of 610 pages. $2 00. 

No other volume extant gives the reader so true a picture of what he would be likely to see 
knd nieet in Egypt. No other book is more practical and plain in its |)icture of precisely what 
the traveller himself will meet. Other writers have one account to give of their journey on paper, 
and another to relate in conversation. Mr. Cooley has but one story for the fireside circle at«J 
the printed page. — Brother Jonathan. 

CHAVASSE— ADVICE TO MOTHERS 

On the Management of their Offspring, during the periods of Infancy, Child- 
hood, and Youth, by Dr. Pye Henry Chavasse, Member of the Royal Col- 
lege of Surgeons, London, from the third English edition, one volume, 
lymo. of 180 pages. Paper 2o cents, cloth 37 1-2. 

All that I have attempted is, to have written useful advice, in a clear style, stripped of all 
technicalities, which mothers of every station may understand. * * * j have adopted a con- 
versational form, as being more familiar, and as an easier metho<l of making myself understood. — 

Extract from Aulhor''s Preface. 

COPLEY.— EARLY FRIENDSHIPS. 

By Mrs. Copley. With a frontispiece. One volume, 18mo. 37-12 cents. 

A continuation of the little library of popular works for " the People and their Children." Ill 
design is, by giving the boarding-school history of a young girl, whose early education had been 
conducted on Christian principles, to show the pre-eminent value of those principles in moulding 
and a<!orning the character, and enabling their possessor successfully to meet the temptations 
and trials of life. It is attractively written, and full of interest. — Com. Adv. 

COPLEY.— THE POPLAR GROVE: 

Or, little Harry and his Uncle Benjamin. By Mrs. Copley, author of" Earlj 
Friendships," «S:c., &c. One vol. 18nio. frontispiece, 37 1-2 cents. 

An excellent little story this, showing how soimd sense, honest principles, and intelligent 
Industry, not only advance their possessor, but, as in the case of Uncle Ucrijamin the gardener, 
enable him to become the benefactor, (;uide, and friend of relations cast down from a loAicrsphera 
in life, and, but for him, without lesource. It is a tale for youth of nil classes, that cannot ba 
read without profit. — .V. l". Amtrican. 

CORTES.— THE ADVENTURES OF 

Hernan Cortes, the Conqueror of IMexico, by the author of "Uncle Philip'i 

Conversations," with a Portrait. One volume, 18nio. 37 1-2 rents, 
■''onnltig one ofthe series of " A Library for my Young Counl.-jnien.' 

Tiir story is full of interest, and is told in a captivating stylo. Such books add all the charm* 
of romance to the value of history. — Prur. Journal. 

COTTON.-ELIZABETH; OR, THE EXILES OF SIBERIA. 

By JMadame Cotton. Miniature size, 31 1-4 cents. 
Forming one ofthe series of " Miniature Classical Library." 
The extaniii*e popularity of this liltlx tale is well known. 

6 



Appieton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

COWPER.— THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

Of William Cowper, Esq., including the Hymns and Translations from Mad 
Guion, Milton, &c., and Adam, a Sacred Drama, from the Italian of Bat- 
tista Andreini, with a Memoir of the Autiior, by the Rev. Henry Stebbing, 
A. M. One volume, 16mo., 800 pages, $L 50, or in 2 vols. $1 75. 

Forming one of the Series of "Cabinet Edition of Standard British Poets." 

Morality never found in genius a more devoted advocate than Cowper, nor has mora! wisdom, 
h\ its phiin and severe precepts, lioen ever more successfully combined with the delicate spirit of 
poetry tlian in liis works. He was endowed with all the powers which a poet could want who 
nas to be the moralist of the world— the reprover, but not the satirist, of men — the teacher o/ 
limple truths, which were to be rendered gracious without endangering their simplicity. 

CRUDEN— CONCORDANCE OFTHE NEW TESTAMENT. 

By Alexander Cruden, M. A., with a Memoir of the Author by W. Youngman. 
Abridged from the last London Edition, by Wm. Fatton, D. D. Portrait. 
One volume, 32mo., sheep, 50 cents. 
*** Contains all the words to be found in the large work relating to the New Testament. 

DE FOE— PICTORIAL ROBINSON CRUSOE. 

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. By Daniel De Foe. With a 
Memoir of tlie Author, and an Essay on liis Writings, with upwards of 300 
spirited Engravings, by tiie celebrated French artist, Grandville One 
elegant volume, octavo, of 500 pages. $1 75. 

Crusoe has obtained a ready passport to tlie mansions of tlie rich, and the cottages of the poor, 
and communicated equal delight to all ranks and classes of the community. Few works have 
been more generally read, or more justly admired ; few that have yielded such incessant aniusn- 
ment, and, at the same time, have developed so many lessons of practical instruction. — Sir Walter 
Scott. 

The Messrs. Appleton & Co., of New York, have just published a beautiful edition of "The 
Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe." Not the miserable abridgment generally circulated, 
but De Foe's genuine work. Robinson Crusoe in full and at length, a story which never palls upon 
the reader, and never can lose its popularity while the English language endures. — Pennsylvunian. 

D'lSRAELI— CURiOSITIES OF LITERATURE, 

A.nd the Literary Character illustrated, by L DTsraeli, Esq., D. C. L., F. S. A. 
First and Second Series. The Literary Character, illustrated by the Histo- 
ry of Men of Genius, drawn from their own feelings and confessions, by [. 
D'Israeli, Esq. Curiosities of American Literature, compiled, edited, and 
arranged by Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. The three works in one volume, 
large 8vo. Price $3 50. 

This is the double title of a large and beautifuHy printed octavo volume, which has just made 
its appearance in the World of Leiters. With the first part every body is already familiar. The 
deep research, the evident enthusiasm in his subject, and the light and pungent humor displayed 
by D'Israeli in it, are the delight of all classes of readers, and .vill undoubtedly send him down a 
•heerful journey lo posterity, if only on account of the pleasant company in which he has managed 
■o agreeably to introduce himself. The other portion of this work — that relating to the Curiosi- 
ties of American Literature — is entirely new to the public ; yet we shall be disappointed if it is 
not uirectly as popular as the other. Mr. Griswold has pertbrmed his task in a manner highly 
creditable to his taste, while displaying most favorably his industry, tact, and perseverance. — JVeic 
York Tribune. 

DE LEUZE.— PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION IN ANIMAL 

Magnetism, by J. P. F. De Leuze, translated by Thomas C. Hartsiiorn. Re- 
vised edition, with an Appendix of Notes by the Translator, and Letters 
from ..miiient Physicians and others, descriptive of cases in the U. States. 
One volume, 12tK0. $i UO. 

The transl.itor of tliis work has certainly presented the piofession with an uncommonly weH 
digested treatise, enhanced in value by his own notes and the corroborative testimony of eminenl 
vkyiKiann. — Boston Med 4' Surg. Journal. 

7 



Applefon's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

ELLIS— THE DAUGHTERS OF ENGLAND; 

riii-ir position in .Society, Character, and Responsibilities. By Mrs. Ellis. 
In one handsome volume, J2ino., clotli j^ilt. 5U cents. 

ELLIS— THE WOMEN OF ENGLAND; 

Tlieir Social Duties and Domestic Habits. By Mrs. Ellis. One handsome 
volume, lymo., cloth gilt. 50 cents. 

ELLIS— THE WIVES OF ENGLAND ; 

Their Relative Duties, Domestic Influences, and Social Obligations. By Mrs. 
Ellis. One handsome volume, ]2mo., cloth gilt. 50 cents. 

ELLIS— THE MOTHERS OF ENGLAND; 

Their Influence and Responsibility. By JMrs. Ellis. One handsome volume, 
r<2mo., cloth gilt. 50 cents. 

'i'liis is an appropriate and very valuable! conclusion to the scries of works on tlie subject o( 
female duties, by which Mrs. Ellis has pleased, and we doubt not profited, thousands of readers. 
Iler counsels demand attention, not only by their practical, siigacious usefulness, but also by the 
iieek and modest spirit in which they are communicated. — Watcliman. 

ELLIS— THE MINISTER'S FAMILY; 

Or Hints to those who would make Home happy. By Mrs. Ellis. One vol- 
ume, 18mo. 37 1-2 cents. 

ELLIS— FIRST IMPRESSIONS; 

Or Hints to tliose who would make Home happy. By M/s. Ellis. One vol 
ume, ISino. 37 1-2 cents. 

ELLIS.— DANGERS OF DINING OUT; 

Or Hints to those who would make Home happy. By Mrs. Ellis. One vol 
ume, J8mo. 37 1-2 cents. 

ELLIS— SOMERVILLE HALL; 

Or Hints to those who would make Home iiappy. By Mrs. Ellis. One vol- 
ume, ]8mo. .37 1-2 cents. 
The above four volumes form a portion of series of" Talcs for the People and their Children." 

" To wish prosperity to such books a? these, is to desire the moral and physical welfare of th« 

li'imun species." — Balh Chruniclc. 

EVANS— EVENINGS WITH THE CHRONICLERS; 

Or IJncle Rupert's Tales of Chivalry. By R. M. Evans. \\'itli seventeen 
illustrations. One volume, IGmo., elegantly bound, 75 cents. 

This would have been a volume after our own hearts, while we were younger, and it ii 
»carculy less so now when we are somewhat older. It discourses of those tliin;3 whidi rlmrmcd 
all of us in early youth — the daring <leeds of the Knights and Squires of feudal warfare — the 'ru* 
version of the " Chevy Chase,"— the exploits of the stout and stalwart Warriors of Kngland, 
Scotland, and Germany. In a word, it is an attractive hook, and rendered more so to young read- 
ers by a series of wood engravings, beautifully executed. — Courier ^' Enquirer, 

EVANS— THE HISTORY OF JOAN OF ARC. 

By R. M. Evan?, author of "Evenings with the Chroniclers, ' with twenty- 
four elegant illustrations. One volume, IGnio. Extra gilt. 75 cents. 
In the work before us, wc have not only n most interesting biography of this female prodigy, 
iucluding what she was and what she accomplished, but also a faithful account of the relatiot>B 
that cxir* .ed between England and France, and of the singular stale of things that marked tlio 
period when this wonderiul jiersonage appeared upon the stage. The leading incidents of hoi 
5ife are related with exquisite simplicity anil touching pathos ; and you cannot repress your admi- 
rntion for her heroic qualities, or scarcely repress your tours in view of her ignominious end. To 
Uio youthful reader we heartily recommend tliis volume. — Albany Adeertitcn 

8 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 



EVANS— THE RECTORY OF VALEHEAD; 

Or, tlie Records of a Holy Home. By the Rev. R. W. Evans. From the 
twelfili En<rlish edition. One volume, 16mo. 75 cents. 

Universally and cordi.illy do we recommend this delightful volume We believe no person 
sould rend this work, and not be the better for its pious and touching lessons. It is a page takeo 
.'rom tlie bonk of life, and eloquent with all the instruction of an excellent pattern ; it is a com- 
mentary on the affectionate warning, " Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth." We 
have not for some time seen a work we could so deservedly praise, or so conscientiously recora- 
[ue..J — Literary Oazcttc. 

EMBURY— NATURE'S GEMS; OR,AMERICAN FLOWERS 

(n llieir Native Haunts. By Emma C. Embury. With twenty plates of Plants 
carefully colored after Nature, and landscape views of their localities, 
from drawingartaken on the spot, by E. W. Whitefield. One imperial oc- 
tavo vol'ime, printed on the finest paper, and elegantly bound. 
This beautiful work will undoubtedly form a "Gift-Book" for all seasons of the year. It is 
lUui'.rated with twenty colored engravings of indigenous flowers, taken from drawings made on 
the spot where they were found ; while each flower is accompanied by a view of some striking 
feature of American scenery. The literary plan of the book differs entirely from that of arxy other 
work on a similir sul)jcct which has yet appeared. Each plate has its botanical and local de- 
scription, though the chief part of the volume is composed of original tales and poetry, illustrative 
of the sentiment? of the flowers, or associated with the landscape. No pains or expense has been 
spared in the mi clianical execution of the volume, and the fact that it is purely American both 
in its graphic and literary departments, should recommend it to general notice. 

EWBANK— HYDRAULICS AND MECHANICS. 

A Descriptive and Historical Account of Hydraulic and other Machines for 

raising Water, including the Steam and Fire Engines, ancient and modern ; 

with Observations on various subjects connected with the Mechanic Arts ; 

including the Progressive Development of the Steam Engine. In five 

books. Illustrated by nearly three hundred Engravings. By Thomas 

Ewbank. One handsome volume of six hundred pages. $3 50. 

This is a highly valuable production, replete with novelty and interest, and adapted to gratify 

equally the historian, the philosopher, and the mechanician, being the result of a protracted and 

extensive research among the arcana of historical and scientific literature. — JVut. Intelligencer, 

FABER-THE PRIMITIVE DOCTRINE OF ELECTION; 

Or, an Historical Inquiry into the Ideality and Causation of Scriptural Elec- 
tion, as received and maintained in llie primitive Church of Christ. By 
(leorge Stanley Faber, B. D., author of "Difficulties of Romanism,' 
" Dilficulties of Infidelity," &c. Complete in one volume, octavo. $1 75. 
Mr. Faber verifies his opinion by demonstration. We cannot pay a higher respect to his work 

lh;in by recommending it to all. — Church of England Quarterly Review. • 

FALKNER— THE FARMER'S MANUAL. 

A Practical Treatise on tiie Nature and Value of Manures, founded from 
E.xperiments on various Crops, with a brief Account of the most Recent 
Discoveries in Agricultural Chemistry. By F. Falkner and the Author of 
" British Husbandry." 12mo., paper cover 31 cents, cloth 50 cents. 

It is the object of the present treatise toexplain the nature and constitution of manures geno- 
rallv — to point out the means of augmenting tlie quantity and preserving the fertilizing power of 
farii. yard manure, the various sources of mineral and other artificial manures, and the cause ot 
th^ii frpxjuent failuies. — Author's Preface. 

FARMER'S TREASURE, THE ; 

Containing " F'alkner's Farmer's Manual," and " Smith's Productive Farm- 
ing," bound together, liimo., 75 cents. 

FOSTER— ESSAYS ON CHRISTIAN MORALS, 

Experimental and Practical. Originally delivered as Lectures at Broadmead 
Chapel, Bristol. By Joh'. Foster, author of "Essays on Decision of Char- 
acter, etc. One volume, 18mo., 50 cents. 

This volume contains twenty-aiz Esaays, some of which are of the highest ordei of sublimit) 
Biod exoitloDce. 

9 



Applcton's Catalogue of Valuable Publicatir^s. 

FOSTER— BIOG., LIT., AND PHIL. ESSAYS, 

Contributed to the Eclectic Review, by Jolin Foster, autliorof " Essays on De- 
cision of Human Cliaracter," etc. One volume, 12mo., $1 25. 
These contributions well deserve to cIusa with tliuse of Macauley, Jeffrey, and Sidney Smith, 
in llie Edinl)urgli Review. They contain the productions of a more original and profound thinker 
than either, whose master-mind has exerted a stronger influence iipon his readers, and has lett • 
deeper impression upon our literature; and whose peculiar merit it was to present the doctrine* 
and moralities of the Christian faith, under a form and aspect which redepniad the familiar from 
tritLMifss, and tlirew a charm and freshness about the severest trutlis. — Londo* Patriot. 

FROST.— THE BOOK OF THE NAVY: 

Comprising a General History of the American Marine, and particular account! 
of all tlie most celebrated Nava. Battles, from the Declaration of Independ 
ence to the present time, compiled from the best authorities. By John 
Frost, LL. D. With an Appendix, containing Naval Songs, Anecdotes, 
&c. Embellished with numerous original Engravings, and Portraits of 
distinguislied Naval Commanders. One volume, 12mo., $1 00. 

This is the only popular and yet authentic single view which we have of the naval exploits o/ 
our country, arranged with good tasto and set forth in good language — U. S. OaicUe. 

This volume is dedicated to the Secretary of the Navy, and is altogether a very faithful and 
attractive historical record. It deserves, and will doulrtless have, a very extended circulation 

—JVat Intelligencer. 

FROST.— THE BOOK OF THE ARMY: 

Comprising a General Military History of the United States, from the period 
of tlie Revolution to the present time, with particular accounts of all the 
most celebrated Battles, compiled from the best authorities. By Johr 
Frost, LL. D. Illustrated with numerous Engravings, and portraits of 
distinguished Commanders. One volume, 12mo., $1 25. 

This work gives a complete history of military operations, and their causes and effects, fron 
the opening of the Revolution to the close of the last war, witli graphic descriptions of the rela 
bratcd battles and characters of the leading generals. It is illustrated with numerous portraits oi 
steel and views of battles, from original drawings by Darley and others. The importance of pop 
ular works of the class to which this and the " Book of the Navy " belong, must be obvious to sif 
who recognize the value of national recollections in preserving a true national spirit. 

FRESENIUS.— CHEMICAL ANALYSIS. 

Elementarv Instruction in Chemical Analysis. By Dr. C. Rhemigius Frese- 
nius. With a Preface by Prof Liebig. Edited by I. Lloyd Bullock. One 
neat volume, 12mo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1 00. 
This Introduction to Practical Chemistry is admitted to be the most valuable Elementary In- 
structor in Chemical Analysis fo scientific operatives, and for pharmaceutical cliemists, which has 
ever been presented to the public. 

GUIZOT.— THE YOUNG STUDENT; 

\>r, Ralph and Victor. By Madame Guizot. From the French, by Samuel 
Jackson. One volume of 500 pages, witli illustrations. Price 75 cents, or 
in threa volumes, $1 12. 
This volume of biographical incidents is a striking picture of juvenile life To all that num- 
berless class of youth who arc passing through their literary education, whether in boarding- 
schnolji or ac;i(lcTTiics, in the collegiate co-.rse, or the preparatory studies connected with them, we 
know nothing more piecisely fitted to meliorate their character, and direct their course, subordi- 
nate to the hiiilier authority of Christian ethics, than this excellent delineation of " The Young 
Student," by Madame Guizot. * * * The French .Academy were correct in their jadgment, 
when ihey proEiounced Madame Guizot's .Student the best book of the ycaT.— Courier !)■ Enquirer, 

GUIZOT.— GENERAL HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION 

In Europe, froni the fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution. 
'I'-anslated from the French of M. Guizot, Professor of History to la Facul- 
t6 des Lettres of Paris, and Minister of Public Instruction. Third Ameri- 
can edition, with Notes, by C. S. Henry, D. D. One handsome volume, 
12'no., $1 00. 

M. Guizot in his instructive Lectures has given us an epitome of modern history, distinguished 
by all the merit which, in another department, renders lilackstone a subject of such peculiar and 
unbounded praise — a work closely condense \, including notliing useless, omitting nothing assen 
lial I written with grute, and conoeired and arranged with consummate ability. — BosL TravMtr 

10 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

GRISWOLD— CURIOSITIES OF AMER. LITERATURE: 

Compiled, edited, and arninged by Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. See D'Israeli 

GIRL'S MANUAL: 

Comprising a summary View of Female Studies, Accomplishments, and Prin 
cipies of Conduct. Frontispiece. One volume, 18mo , 50 cents. 

GOLDSMITH— PICTORIAL VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 

The Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. Illustrated with upwards of 
100 engravings on wood, making a beautiful volume, octavo, of 300 pages. 
$1 25. The same, miniature size, 37 1-2 cents. 

VVe love to turn back over these rich old classics of our own language, and re-juvenate our- 
selves by the never-failing associations which a re-perusal always calls up. Let any one who has 
not read this immortal tale for fifteen or twenty years, try the experiment, and we will warrant 
that he rises up from the task — the pleasure, we should have said — a happier and a better man. 
In the good old Vicar of Wakefield, all is pure gold, without dross or alloy of any kind. This 
much we have said to our last generation readers. This edition of the work, however, we take it, 
was got up for thu benefit of the rising generation, and we really envy our young friends the ploa- 
Bure whicli is before such of them as will read it for the first time. — Savannah Republican. 

GOLDSMITH— ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 

By Oliver Goldsmith. Miniature size, 37 1-2 cents. 

Forming one of the seiies of" Miniature Classical Library." 

GRESLEY— PORTRAIT OF A CHURCHMAN, 

By the Rev. W. Gresley, A. M. From the Seventh English edition. Ono 
elegant volume, Itinio., 75 cents. 

" The main part of tliis admirable volume is occupied upon the illustration of the practical 
tBorkinir of Church principlc.i tchcn sincerely received, setting forth their value in the commerce ol 
daily life, and how surely they conduct those who embrace them in the safe and quiet path of holy 
life." 

GRESLEY— A TREATISE ON PREACHING, 

In a Series of Letters by the Rev. \V. Gresley, M. A. Revised, with Supple- 
mentary Notes, by the Rev. Benjamin I. Haight, M. A., Rector of All 
Saints' Church, New York. One volume, 12mo. ^1 25. 

^Advertisement. — In preparing the American edition of Mr. Gresley's valuable Treatise, a few 
foot-notes have been added by the Editor, which are distinguished by brackets. The more extend- 
ed notes at tlie end have been selected from the best works on the subject — and which, v/ith ona 
or two exceptions, are not easily accessible to the American student. 

HAMILTON— THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 

Edited by his son, John C. Hamilton. Two volumes, 8vo., $5 00. 

We cordially recommend the perusal and diligent study of these volumes, exhibiting, as thej 
do, much valuable matter relative to the Revolution, the establishment of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, ar.d other important events in the annals of our country. — JV, Y. Review. 

HEMANS— THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

Of Felicia Ilemans, printed from the last English edition, edited by her Sister. 

Illustrated with G steel Engravings. One beautifully printed and portable 

volume, IGmo , ^ , or in two volumes, $ 
Of this highly accomplished poetess it has been truly said, that of allher sex " few have writ- 
ten so much and so well." Although her writings possess an energy equal to their high-toned 
beauty, yet are they so pure and so refined, that not a line of them could feeling spare or delicacy 
blot fiom her pages. Her imagination v/as rich, chaste, and glowing. Her chosen thsmesaretha 
iu-aillo, the hearth-stone, and the death-bed. In her poems of Occur de Lion, Ferdinand of Ara- 
fon, and Bernard del Carpio, we see beneath the glowing colors with which she clothes her ideas, 
tho feelings of a v:oman's heart. Her earlier poems, Records of Woman and Forest Sanctuary, 
rtand unrivalled. In short, her works will ever be read by a pious as^d enlightened community. 

HEMANS.-SONGS OF THE AFFECTIONS, 

By Felicia Hemans. One volume, 32mo., gilt 31 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" Miniature Classical Library." 

HARE— SERMONS TO A COUNTRY CONGREGATION, 

Ry Augustus William Hare, A. M., late Fellow of New College, and Rector of 
Alton Barnes. One volume, royal 8vo., $2 25. 

11 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

HALL— THE PRINCIPLES OF DIAGNOSIS, 

By Marshall Hall, M. D., F. 15. S , &c. Second edition, with many improve- 
ments. By Dr. Joim A. Sweet. One volume, dvo., ^2 00. 

Thin work was published in acconlance with the dc»ire of some of tlie most celebrated physi- 
lianB of tliis country, who were an.\ious lluit it should be broug)it witliin the reach of all classoi 
oi medical men, to whose attention it olfirs strong claims as llie hi'st work on the eubject. 

HAZEN— SYMBOLICAL SPELLING-BOOK. 

TI.e Symbolical Spelling-Book, in two parts. By Edward Ilazen. Cor.taiik- 

ing 288 engravings. 18 3-4 cents. 

This work is used in upwards of one thousand difierent schools, and pronounced to be one af 
the best works published. 

HODGE— THE STEAM-ENGINE: 

Its Or gin and gradual Improvement, from the time of Hero to the present day, 
as adapted to IMamifactureH, Locomotion, and Navigation. Illustrated with 
48 Plates in full detail, numerous wood ruts, &c. By Paul R. Hodge, 
C. E. One volume folio of plates, and letter-press in 8vo. ^10 00. 

'J'liis work should be jilaccd in the '• Captain's Office " of every steamer in our country, and 
»lso with every engineer to whom is confided the control of the engine. From it they would de- 
rive all the information which would enable them to comi)rehcnd the caus-i and effects of every 
•rdinary accident, and also the method promptly and successfully to repair arty injury, and to ren»- 
edy any defect. 

HOLYDAY TALES: 

Consisting of pleasing Moral Stories for the Young. One volume, square 
l6mo., with numerous illustrations. 37 1-2 cents. 

Thii is a most capital little book. The stories are evidently written by an able hand, and that 
loo m an exceedingly i.ttraclive style. — Spectator. •» 

HOOKER— THE COMPLETE WORKS 

Of that learned and judicious divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, with an account of 
his Life and Death. By Isaac Walton. Arranged hv the Rev. John Keble, 
M. A. First American from the last Oxford edition. With a complete 
general Index, and Index of the texts of Scripture, prepared expresslv for 
this edition. Two elegant volumes, 8vo., $4 00. 

Contents. — The I'ditor's Preface comprises a general survey of the former edition of Ilookcr'f 
Works, with Historical Illustrations of the period. After which follows the liife of Hooker, bj 
Isaac Walton. His chief work succeeds, on the " Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity." 

It commences with a lengthened Preface designed as an address " to them who seek the refor- 
mation of the Laws and Orders Ecclesiastical of the Church of England." The discussion is divi- 
ded into eight books, which include an investigation of the topics. After those eight books of the 
"Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity," follow two Sermons, '•The certainty and perpetuity of Faith ip 
the elect ; especially of ibe Prophet Habakkuk's faith ;" and " Justification, VVorks, and how the 
fotuidation of faith is overthrown." Next are introduced " A supplication made to the Council 
by Master Walter Travers," and " Mr. Hooker's answer to the supplication that Mr Travert 
made to the Council." Then follow two Sermons — '' On the nature of Pride," and a '' Remedy 
ayainst Sorrow and Fear." Two Sermong on part of the epistle of the .Apostle Jude are next in- 
serted, with a prefatory dedication by Henry Jackson. The last article in the works of Air. Hooket 
■8 a Sermon on Prayr. 

'I'he English edition in three volumes sells at $10 00. The American is an exact reprint, at 
less than hall'tlie \n'u-t.\ 

HUDSON— THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY HUDSON, 

By the author of " Uncle Philips Conversations." Frontispiece. I8mo , 
cloth. 37 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" A Library for my Young Countrymen." 
'J'liis little volume furnishc< us, from authentic sources, the most important facts in this ct'e- 
oiaied adventurer's life, and in a style that possesses more than ordinary interest. — Evening PaxL 

HOWITT— THE CHILD'S PICTURE AND VERSE-BOOK ; 

Commonly called " (Jtlo SjiccUter's Fable-Book." Translated from the Ger- 
man by Mary Howitt. Illustrated with 100 engravings on wood. Sqiiara 
12mo., in ornamental binding, ^ 

A celebrated Gorman review says, ''Of this production, which makes itself an epoch in the 
world of children, it is superfluous to upeak. The Fable-Iiook is throughout all Germany in the 
aaodi of parents and children, and will always be now, because every year fresh children are born * 

13 



Applcton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 



HOWITT— LOVE AND MONEY; 

An Every-Day Tale, by Jlary Ilowitt. 18mo., two Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents 

LITTLE COIN, MUCH CARE; 

Or, How Poor People Live. By Mary Ilowitt. 18mo., two Plates, 38 centa 

SOWING AND REAPING ; 

Or, What will Come of It. By Mary Ilowitt. 18mo., two Plates, 38 cents. 

ALICE FRANKLIN; 

A Sequel to Sowing and Reaping — a Tale. By Mary Howitt. ISmo. two 
Plates, clotli gilt, 38 cents. 

WORK AND WAGES; 

Or, Life in Service — a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two Plates, clotb 
gilt, 38 cents. 

STRIVE AND THRIVE ; 



A Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18nio., two Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

WHO SHALL BE GREATEST; 

A Tale. By Mary Howitt. Itfmo., two Plates, clotli gilt, 38 cents. 

WHICH IS THE WISER; 

Or, People Abroad — a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two Plates, 33 cents. 

HOPE ON, HOPE EVER; 

Or, The Boyhood of Felix Law — a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two 
Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

NO SENSE LIKE COMMON SENSE; 

A Tale. By Mary Howitt. 18mo., two Plates, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

%* The Jibove ten volumes form a portion of the aeries pulilisliud under the general title o( 
'■ Titles for the People and their 'Jhildren." 

Of late years many writers have exerted their talenti in juvenile literature, with ?reat success. 
Mis.s Martinoau has made poli'.cal economy as familiar to hoys as it formerly was to statesmen. 
Our own Miss Sedgwick has produced some of the most beautiful moral stories, for the edification 
anil delight of children, which have ever lieen written. The Hon. Horace Mann, in addresses to 
adults, has presented the claims of children for good education, with a power and eloquonce of 
stylf, and an elevation of thought, which shows his heart is in his work. 'J'lie stories of Mary 
Howitt Harriet Martineau, li'-'s. Copley, and Mrs. Ellis, which form a part of" Tales for the Peo- 
ple and their ("liildren." will ht <t>und valualile additions to juvenile literature ; at the same time 
they may he read with profit by parents for the good lessons they inculcate, and by all other read- 
ers for the literary excellence they display 

We wish they could be placed in the hands and engraven on the minds of all the you'n in the 
country. They manifest a nice and accurate observation of human nature, and especially the na- 
tuc of children, a fine sympathy with every thing good and pure, and a capability of infusing it in 
the minds of others — great beauty and simplicity of style, and a keen eye to practical life, with all 
its faults, united with a deep love for ideal excellence. 

Messrs Ap|deton & Co deserve the highest praise for the excellent manner in which they 
have "got up" their juvenile library, and we sincerely hope that its success will be so great as to 
induce them to make continual contributions to its treasures. The collection is one which should 
be owned by every parent who wishes that the moral and intellectual improvement of his childret 
•hould keep pace with their growth in years, and tha development of their physical powers — 
Jimerican Traveller 

JERRAM.— THE CHILD'S OWN STORY-BOOK; 

Or, Tales and Dialogues for the Nursery. By Mrs. Jerram (late Jane Eliza- 
beth Holmes). Illustrated with numerous Engravings. 50 cents. 

There ire seventy stories in this volume They are admirably adapted for the couutlesa 
youth for whose edification they are narrated — Boston Oaiette. 

JOHNSON— THE HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 

Prince of Abyssinia — a Tale. By Samuel Johnsan, LL. D. 32mo., gi)| 
leaves, 38 cents. 

*t* Forming ona of the series of" Miniature Clatsieal LSnrarv.** 
13 



Appkton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

JAMES— THE TRUE CHRISTIAN, 

lixeiiijilified in a Series of Addresses, liy Kev. John Aivgcil James. One vol 
Ibrno, 38 cents. 
These addresses are amongst the choicest effusions of the admirahle author. — Chr. Intell, 

-THE ANXIOUS INQUIRER 

OiTp- Salvation Directed and Eiiconraged. By Rev. John Angell Jamea. 
One volume, 18nio., 38 cents. 

U|iivards of twenty thousand copies of this excellent little volume have been sold, which fuH^ 
Mtests tlie hijjh estimutioii the work hiis attained witli the religious community. 

— HAPPINESS, ITS NATURE AND SOURCES. 

By Rev. John Angell James. One volume, 32mo., 25 cents. 

This is wriltori in the excellent author's best vein. A better book wo have not in a long tim« 
Been. — Evangelist. 

THE CHRISTIAN PROFESSOR: 

Addressed in a Series of Counsels and Cautions to the JMembers of Christian 
Churches. By Rev. John Angell James. Second edition. One volumf, 
18nio., 63 cents. 
A most excellent work from the able and prolific pen of Mr. James. — CAr. Intelligencer 

THE YOUNG MAN FROM HOME. 

In a Series of Letters, especially directed for the Moral Advancement of 
^'outh. By Rev. John Angell James. Fifth edition. One volume, 
]8mo., 38 cents. 
The work is a rich treasury of Cliristian counsel and instruction. — Albany AdcerLiser 

THE WIDOW DIRECTED 

To the Widow's God. By Rev. John Angell James. One volume, 18mo., 
38 cents. 

The book is worthy to be read by others besides the class for which it is especially designed ; 
md we doubt not that it is destined to come as a friendly visitor to many a house of mourning, 
>r,(l as a heulmg balm to many a wounded heart. — JV. y. Observer 

KEIGHTLEY.-THE MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE 

And Italy, designed for the use of Schools. By Thomas Keightley. Nume- 
rous wood-cut illustrations. One volume, 18mo., half bound, 44 cents. 

This is a neat little volume, and well adapted to the purpose for which it was prepared. It 
presents, in a very compendious and convenient form, every thing relating to the subject, of i^lpo^- 
tance to l.lie young student. — L. I. Star. 

XINGSLEY.— THE SACRED CHOIR: 

A Collection of Church Music, consisting of Selections from the most distin- 
guished Authors, among whom are the names of Haydn, INIozart, Beetho- 
ven, Pergolessi, &.c. «5t.c., with several pieces of Music by the Author, also 
a Progressive Elementary System of Instruction for Pupils. By George 
Kingsley, author of the Social Choir, &c. &c. Fourth edition. 75 cents. 

Mr. George Kin-jsloy : Pir, — We have cxaminedthe " Sacred Choir " enough to lead us to a^- 
pceciato the work as llic best publication of Sacred Music extant. Ft is beautifully printed aai 
• uibslantially bound conferring credit on the publishers. We bespeak for the " Sacred Ciioir " 
extensive circulation O. S. Bowdoin, 

Sinceicly yours, E O. Goodwin 

I). Ingraham, 

Kip_THE DOUBLE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH, 

By Rev. Wm. Ingraham Kip, author of" Lenten Fast." One volume,-! 7mo 
Second edition. Boards 75 cents, cloth $1 00. 

This is a sound, clear, and able production — a hook much wanted for these times, and one thdt 
we feel per^^uaded will prove eminently useful. It is a happy delineation of that dol'dl£ wiT:«E»f 
which the Church bears against Romanism and ultra-Protestantism, and points out her niiddk 
path as the only opi of truth "and safety. — Banner of the Cross. 

14 



Appltton' s Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

LAFEVER— BEAUTIES OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE; 

Consisting of forty-eiglit Plates of Original Designs, with Plans, Elevations, 
and Sections, also a Dictionary of Technical Terms ; the whole forming a 
complete Manual for the Practical Builder. By M. Lafever, Architect. 
One volume, large 8vo., half bound, $6 00. 

STAIR-CASE AND HAND-RAIL 

Construction. The Modern Practice of Stair-case and Hand-rail Construction, 
practically explained, in a Series of Designs. By M. Lafever, Architect 
\Mth Plans and Elevations for Ornamental Villas. Fifteen Plates. One 
volume, large Svo., $3 00. 

Jlr. Lafcvnr's " Ucauties ot" ArchitPCturr," ami his " Practice of Stair-caso and Hand-rail con- 
•truction," constitute two volumes rich in instruction in those departments of business. They 
«ie a necessary aci]uisition notanlytothe operative workman, hut to all landlords and proprietors 
of houses, who would cornhine both the ornamental and useful in their faiuUy i'uv .Uings, and also 
understand the most economical and profitable modes by which their edifices can be erected and 
repaired. 

LEWIS— RECORDS OF THE HEART, 

By Saraii Anna Lewis. One volume, 12mo., $1 00. 

We have read some of the pieces with much pleasure. They indicate poetic genius of no or- 
dinary kind, and are imbued with much feeling and pathos. We welcome the volume aa a credit 
able accession to (he poetic literature of the country. — Boston Traveller, 

LIEBIG.— FAMILIAR LETTERS ON CHEMISTRY, 

And its relation to Commerce, Physiology, and Agriculture. By Justus L.e- 
big, M. D. Edited by John Gardner, M. D. One volume. 13 cents 
in paper, 25 cents bound. 
The Letters contained in this little volume embrace some of the most important points of i/ie 

Science of Chemistry, in their application to Natural Philosophy, Physiology, Agriculture, and 

Commerce. 

LETTER-WRITER, 

The Useful Letter-Writer, comprising a succinct Treatise on the Epistolary 
Art, and Forms of Letters for all ordinary Occasions of Life. Compiled 
from the best authorities. Frontispiece. 32mo., gilt leaves, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of " Miniature Classical Library." 

LOOKING-GLASS FOR THE MIND; 

Or, Intellectual Mirror. Being an elegant Collection of the most delightful 
little St<jries and interesting'Tales ; ciiiefly translated from that much ad- 
mired work, L'ami des Enfans. Illustrated with numerous wood-cuts 
From the twentieth London edition. One volume, ISmo ,50 cents. 
Forming one of the series of" Tales for the People and tlieir Children." 

LOG CABIN : 

Or, The World before You. By the author of " Tiiree Experiments of Liv 
ing," " The Huguenots in France and America," etc. One volume, IBrno., 
50 cents. 
Every person who takes up this volume will read it with interest. It is truly what the write! 

intended it should be — '' \ Guide to Usefulness and Happiness." 

LOVER— HANDY ANDY: 

A Tale of Irish Life, by Samuel Lover. Illustrated with twenty-three char- 
acteristic steel Engravings. One volume, 8vo., cloth $1 25, boards $1 00 
Cheap edition, two Plates, paper, 50 cents. 
This boy Handy will be the death of us. What is the police force ab»nt to allow the uttering 

nf a publication that has already brought us to the brink of apoplexy fifly times.' — Sport. Revietc. 

L. S. D.~TREASURE TROVE : 

A Tale, by Samuel Lover. One volume, 8vo., with two steel Engravinga 
Paper cover, 25 cents. 

Tnis is a capital thing. The gay and the grave, the "lively and severe," are univl with a 
•^ilfu. hand, and there is a latent tone of sound morality running through "L. S. D." whloh wil 
(jv« a lasting viilue to its pages. — Commtrcial Advertiser. 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 



LUCY AND ARTHUR; 

A Book for Cliildren. Illustrated with numerous engravings, elegantly bouDi 
in cloth. 50 cents. 

Lucy and Arthur is a charmin? story of the nurserk, prepared oy an experienced author. So" 
euro it tor tiic tainily. — Jimerican Traveller, 

LYRA APOSTOLICA. 

From the Fifth English edition. One elegantly printed volume, 75 cents. 

In this elogant volume tlifrre are forty-five sections, and one hundred and seventy-nine »rk 
poems, all short, and many of thcni sweet. — JVcw York Jimerican. 

MAGEE— ON ATONEMENT AND SACRIFICE: 

Discourses''^*' Taisjw.lations on the Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and 
Sacrifice, an j >■! the Principal Arguments advanced, and the Mode o\ 
Reasoning employed, hy the Opponents of those Doctrines, as held by th« 
Established Clmrch. By the late Most Rev. William AI'Gee, D. D., Arch- 
bishop of Dublin. Two volumes, 8vo., $."} 00 
This is one of the al)Iest critical and polemical worlis of modern times. The profound biblical 

information on a variety of topics which the Archbishop brings forward, must endear his name to 

all lovers of Christianity. — Orme. 

MANNING.-THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH, 

By the Rev. Henry Edward Manning, M. A., Archdeacon of Chichester. One 
volume, ]6iiio., $1 00. 

Part I. The History and Exposition of the Doctrine of Catholic Unity. Part II. The Moral 
Design of Catholic Unity. Part III. The Doctrine of Catholic Unity applied to the Actual Slata 
of Cliriftendom. 

We commend it earnestly to the devout and serious perusal of all Churchmen, and particularly 
of all clergymen, as the able-it discussion we ever met with of a deeply and vitally important suU- 
ject. — Churchman. 

MARRYAT— MASTERMAN READY; 

Or, The Wreck of llie Pacific. Written for Young Persons, by Capt. Marry- 
at. Complete in 3 vols., 18mo., with Frontispiece, cloth gilt, $1 25. 
Forming a portion of the series of" Tales for the People and their Children." 

Wo have never seen any thing from the same pen we like as well as this. It is the modera 
Crusoe, and is entitled to take rank willi that charming romance — Commercial Jidvertiser. 

MARSHALL-NOTES ON THE EPISCOPAL POLITY 

Of tlie Holy Catholic Church, with some arcViunt of tli? l)e\ elopments of Mo 
dern Religious Systems, by Thomas William Marsliall, B. A., of the Die 
cese of Salisbury. Edited by Jonathan M. \Vainwriglit, D. D. With a 
new and complete Index of the Subjects and of the Texts of Scripture 
One volume, 12mo., i|l 25. 

I. Introduction. II. Scripture Evidence. III. Evidence of Antiquity. IV. Admission el 
Adversaries. V. Development of Modern Religious .Systems. 

A more important work than this has not been issued for a long time. We earnestly reco^ 
mend it to the attention of every Churchman. — Banner of the Crose. 

MARTINEAU.-THE CROFTON BOYS; 

A Tale for Youth, by Harriet Martineau. One volume, ISmo., Frontispiec* 
Cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of "Tales for the People and their Children." 

It abounds in interest, and is told with the characteristic ability and spirit of the distinguiihad 
Mthor. — Evening Post. 

THE PEASANT AND THE PRINCE ; 



A Tale of the French Revolution, by Harriet Martineau. One volume, .18mo. 
Frontispiece. Cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of " Tales for the People and their Children.' 

This is a most inviting little history of Louis the Sixteenth and his family. Here, in a ityla 
even more familiar than Scott's Tabs of a Grandfather, wo have a graphic epitome of many faita 
connected with the dayi of the " Revolution." — Courier ^ En^uirtr. 

16 



Applcton'a Vatahgut oj Vamaoit x uoiiLaiiimi.. 

MAURICE— THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST; 

L)r, llinis respecting tlie I'linciples, Constitution, and Ordinances of the Cath- 
olic Clinrcii. By Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, M. A. London. One 
volume, 8vo., GOD pages, $2 50. 

On the theory of the Church of Chrii?t, all .ihould consult the work of Mr. Maurice, the raoel 
phllosophicul writer of the day. — Prof. OarbelOs Bampton Lectures, 1842 

MILTON— THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

Oi John Milton, will) E.xplanatory Notes and a Life of the Author, by the Rev 
Henry Stebbing, A. M. Illustrated with six steel Engravings. One vol- 
ume, 16mo., $1 25. 

Forming one of the series of "Cabinet Edition of Standard Poets." *;** The Latin and Italian 
Poems are included in this edition. 
Mr. Stebbing's Notes will be found very useful in elucidating the learned allusions with which 
the text abounds, and they are also valuable for the correct appreciation with which the writer di- 
rects attention to the beauties of the author. 

PARADISE LOST, 

By John Milton. With Notes, by Rev. H. Stebbing. One volume, 18mo., 
clotli 38 cents, gilt leaves 50 cents. 

PARADISE REGAINED, 

By John Milton. With Notes, by Rev. H. Stebbing. One volume, 18mo., 

cloth 25 cents, gilt leaves 38 cents. 
MAXWELL.-FORTUNES OF HECTOR O'HALLORAN 

And his man Mark Antony O'Toole, by W. H. fliaxvvell. One volume, 8vo., 
two plates, paper, 50 cents, twenty-four plates, boards, ^1 00, cloth, $1 25 
It is one of the best of all the Irish stories, full of spirit, fun, drollery, and wit. — Cour. S( Enq 

MOORE— LALLAH ROOKH ; 

An Oriental Romance, by Thomas Moore. One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, 
cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

For?ning a portion of the series of" Miniature Classical Library." 
This exquisite Poem has long been the admiration of readers of all classes. 

MORE— PRACTICAL PIETY, 

By Hannah More. One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, 38 cents. 
Forming' one of the series of'' Miniature Classical Library." 
"Practical Piety " has always bee deemed the most attractive and eloquent of all Hanaak 
More's works. 

PRIVATE DEVOTION: 

A Series of Prayers and ]\Ieditations, with an Luroduotory Essay on Prayer, 
chiefly from the writings of Hannah More. From the twenty-fifth London 
edition. One volume, 32mo., Frontispiece, cloth gilt, 31 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" Miniature Classical Library." 
Upwards of fifty thousand copies of diis admir bio manual have been sold in the U. States. 

DOMESTIC TALES 

And Allegories, illustrating Human Life. By Hannah More. One volume, 
18mo., 38 cents. 
CoWTENTs.— I. Pliopherd of Salisliury Plain. II. Mr. Fantom the Philosopher. III. T»« 
Shoemakers. IV' Giles the Poacher. V. Servant turned Soldier VI. GenoralJail Delivery 

RURAL TALES, 

By Hannah More. One volume, 18mo., 38 cents. 

CoxTENTS.— I. Parley the Porter. II. All for the Best. III. Two Wealth- Farmer*. IV 
Tom While. V. Pilgrims. VI. Valley of Teais 

Forming a portion of the series of" Tales for the People and their Children " 
These two volumes comprise that portion of Ilannuh More's Repository Talei which aii 
adapted to general usefulness in this country. 

17 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

NAPOLEON.— PiCTORIAL HISTORY 

Of Niipoleon I5oti;i|inrlt', iriuishituii from llie Fiencli of M. Laurent de I/Ar- 
declie, with Five lliimlred spiriled Illustrations, after designs ljy Horace 
Vevn.j;^ -i:-^ 'luenly Original i*ortraits engraved in the best style. Com- 
plete in two handsome volumes, 8vo., about 500 pages each, $3 50 ; cheap 
edition, paper cover, four parts, $2 00. 
The work is superior to the long, verbose productions of Scott and Bourienne — not in styl« 
»lcne, Imt in truth — hein;; written to please neither Cliarlcs X. nor the English aristocracy, but fnt 
the cause of freedom. It lias advantasc'S over every oilier memoir e.\tant. — American Traveller. 

NEWMAN— PAROCHIAL SERMONS, 

By John Henry Newman, 15. D. Si.\ volumes of the English edition in two 

volumes, 8vo., .$5 00. 
SERMONS BEARING ON SUBJECTS 

Of the Day, by John Henry Newman, B. D. One volume, l*2mo., .^1 25. 

As a compendium of Christian duty, these Sermons will be read liy people of all denomina- 
tions ; as models of style, they will he valued by writers in every department of h crature. — United 
States Oaietle. 

OGILBY— ON LAY-BAPTISM: 

An Outline of the Argument against the Validity of Lay-Baptism. By John 
D. Ogilby, D. D., Professor of Eccles. History. One vol., 12mo., 75 cents. 

From a cursory inspection of it, we take it to be a tliorough, fearless, and able discussion of the 
Bubjccl wliicli it proposes — aiming less to excite inquiry, than to satisfy by learned and in^eniouf 
argument inquiries already excited. — ChUTchiiian. 

CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ENGLAND 

And America. Three Lectures — L The Church in England and America 
Apostolic and Catholic. H. The Causes of the English Reformation. HI 
Its Character and Results. By John D. Ogilby, D. D. One vol., 16mo., 
75 cents. 

" I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church." J^ficene Creed 
Prof. Ogilhy has furnished the Church, in this little volume, with a most valuable aid. We 
Jiink it is (k-signed to become a text-book on the subject of which it treats. — True Cattiolic 

OLD OAK TREE: 

Illustrated with numerous wood-cuts. One volume, ISino., 38 cents. 
The [irecepts convoyed are altogether unexceptionable, and the volume is well calculated to 

jrove attractive with children. — Saturday Chronicle. 

OLMSTED— INCIDENTS OF A WHALING VOYAGE: 

To which is added, (Observations on the Scenery, Manners, and Ciistome, and 
Alissionary Stations of the Sandwich and Society Islands, acconifianicd by 
numerous Plates. By Francis Allyn Olmsted. One vol., J2mo., ifjl 50. 
The work embodies a mass of intelligence interesting to the ordinary reader as well as to the 

pliiIosi)])liical iniiuiier. — Courier !■{ F.nquircr 

PAGET— TALES OF THE VILLAGE, 

By the Rev. Francis E. Paget, M. A. Three elegant volumes, 18mo., $1 7: 

The first series, or volume, presents a popular view of the contrast in opinions and modes of 
thought between (Jhurehmen and Romanists ; the second sets forth Church principles, a.^oppoiicd 
to what, in England, is termed Dissent; and the third plaov's in contrast the chaiactcr of the 
C^liurchman and the Inlidel. .\t any time these volumes would be valuable, especially to the 
young. .At present, when men's minds are much turned to such subjects, they cannot fail of beiog 
eagerly sought for. — Metc-Yurk Jlutericati 

PALMER— A TREATISE ON THE CHURCH 

Df Christ. Designed chiefly for the use of Students in Theology. By the 
Rev. William Palmer, M. A,, of Worcester College, O.xford. Edited, with 
Notes, by the Hight Rev, W. R. WhittinglKim, D. D., Bishop of the Prot. 
Epis, Church in tiie Diocese of Maryland. Two volumes, 8vo., $5 00, 

Thj chief ilesign of this work is to supply some answer to the assertion so fiequenlly made, 
(hat individuals are not bound to submit to any ecclesiastical authority whatever : or that, if they 
ire, tlwy munt, in consistency, accejit Romanism with all its claims and errors. — Prefact. 

18 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

PARNELL— APPLIED CHEMISTRY, 

.11 Munufactiires, Arts, and Domestic Economy. Edited by E. A. Parnell, 
Illustrated with numerous wood Engravings, and specimens of Dyed and 
Printed Cottons. Paper cover 75 cents, clotli $1 00. 

Tlie Editor's aim is to divost tlie work, as far as practicable, of all teclinical terms, st »3 to 
adapt it to the requirements of llic f;eneriil reader. 

The above forms t.ie first division of the work. It is the author's intention to continue » frora 
lime to time, so as to form a complete Practical Encyclopa;dia of Chemistry applied to the Arts. 
The subjects to immediately follow will be, Manufacture of Glass, Indigo, Sulphuric Acid Zinc, 
Pottsh, CoiTee, Tea, Chocolate, &c. 

PEARSON— AN EXPOSITION OF THE CREED, 

By John Pearson, D. D., late Bishop of (Chester. With an Appendix, contain- 
ing tlie principal Greek and Latin Creeds. Revised and corrected by tlie 
Rev. W. S. Dobson, M. A., Peterhouse, Cambridge. One vol., 8vo., $2 00. 

The following may bestulcd as the advantages of this edition over all others ■ 
First — Great care has been taken to correct the numerous errors in the references to the texts 
of Scripture, which had crept in by reason of the repeated editions through which this admirable 
work has passed, and many references, as will be seen on turning to the Index of Texts, have 
oeen ailded. 

Secondly — The Quotations in the Notes have beenalmost univ?rsally identified ana the refer- 
ence to them adjoined. 

Lastly — The principal Symbola or Creeds, of which the particular Articles have betn cited by 
Ibe Author, have been annexed; and wherevei the orifjinal writers have given the Symbola in a 
scattered and disjointed manner, the detached parts have been brought into a successive and con- 
nected point of view. These have been added in Chronological order, in the form of aii Appen- 
di.x. — Fide Editor 

PHILIP— THE LIFE AND OPINIONS 

Of Dr. J\Iilne, ]\Iissionary to Cliina. Illustrated by Biographical Annals of 
Asiatic Missions, from Primitive Protestant Times : intended as a Guido 
to Missionary Spirit. By Rev. Robert Philip. One vol., 12mo., 50 cents. 

The work is executed \j»th great skill, and embodies a vast amount of valuable missionary 
inteligonce, besides a rich variety of personal incidents, adapted to gratify not only the missionary 
or the Christian, but the more general reader. — Observer 

YOUNG MAN'S CLOSET LIBRARY, 

By Robert Philip. With an Introductory Essay, by Rev. Albert Barnes. One 
vokiine, l'2rno., $1 OIJ. 

LOVE OF THE SPIRIT, 

Traced in His \V'ork : a Companion to the Experimental (juides. By Roberl 
Philiu. One voluu^e. Idmo.. 50 cents. 



DEVOTIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL 



juides. By Robert Philip. W^ith an Ii. roductory Essay by Rev. Albert 
Barnes. Two volumes, ]2mo., $1 75 Containijig Guide to the i*er- 
plexed, Guide to the Devotional, Guide tc the Tluiifihtful, Guide to the 
Doubting, Guide to tlie Conscientious, Guide to Red<'it ption. 

LADY'S CLOSET LIBRARY: 

The Marys, i r Beauty of Female Holiness : The Marthis or Varieties of Fe- 
male Piety , The Lydias, or Developineiit of Female Cliaracter. By Rob- 
ert Philip. Each volume, 18mo., 50 cents 

The iM.\TERN.\L series of the above popular Library is now ready, entitled 

The Hannahs ; or. Maternal Influence of Sons. By Robert Philip. One 
volume, 18mo., 50 cents. 

The author of this excellent work is known to the public as one of the most prolific writers o- 
tlie day, and scarcely any writer in the department which he occupies has acquired so extensivo 
uid well-merited a.poiiu]i\r\ly. — Kvangclist. 

POLLOK— THE COURSE OF TIME, 

Ry Robert Pollok. With a Life of the Author, and complete Analytical In 
dex, prepared expressly for tliis edition, ^'imo., frontispiece, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of " Miniature Classical Library." 
Few modem Poems exist which at once attained such acceptance and celebrity as tbi*. 

J9 



Appltton' s Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 



PRATT.-DAWNINGS OF GENIUS; 

Or, ilie Early Lives ofsoine Eminent Persons f)f tlie last Century. By A.nns< 
Pratt. One volume, Idmo., frontispiece, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" A Lil)r!iry for my Young Countrymen." 
Contents. — Sir llumpluey Davy — Rev. George Crabljo — Buron Cuvier — Sir Josliua Kcynold*. 
— T.indlcy Murray — Sir James Mackintosh— Dr. Adam Clarke. 

PRIZE STORY-BOOK: 

Consisting ciiiefly of Tales, translated from the Germ.xn, French, and Itaiiisi 
♦ogether with Select Tales from the English. Illustrated with numeromi 
Engravings from new designs. One thick volume, Kimo., clotli gilt. 

PURE GOLD FROM THE RIVERS OF WISDOM : 

A Collection of Short Extracts from tlie most Eminent Writers — Bishop Hall, 
Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, Hooker, Bacon, Leighton, Addison, Wilherforce, 
Johnson, Young, Southey, Lady Montague, Hannah More, etc. One 
volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth gilt, 31 cents. 

Forming one of the series of " Jliniature Classical Library." 

PUSS IN BOOTS: 

A pure Translation in Prose, from the original German. Illustrated with 1 
original Designs, suitable for the Tastes of the Young or Old, by tiie cele- 
brated artist, Otto Speckter. One vol., square ]2mo., cloth gilt. 

SAINT PIERRE.-PAUL AND VIRGINIA: 

A Tale, by J. B. H. De Saint Pierre. One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, clotk 
gilt, 31 cents. 

Forming one of the series of" Miniature Classical liihrary." 

SANDHAM— THE TWIN SISTERS: 

A Tale for Youtii, by Mrs. Sandham. From the twentieth London edition 
One volume, 18mo., frontispiece, cloth gilt, 38 cents. 

J'orniiriga portion of the series of" Tales for the People and their Children." 
The moral is excellent throughout. Its merit renders it a pleasi.iit book for even grown-up' 

children. — Boston Post. 

SCOTT— THE POETICAL WORKS 

Of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Containing l>ay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, 
Lady of the Lake, Don Roderick, Rokeby, Ballads, Lyrics, and Songs, 
with a Life of the Author. Illustrated with si-\ steel Engravings. One 
volume, 16mo., $1 25. 

LADY OF THE LAKE : 

A Poem, by Sir Walter Scott. One volume, ISmo., frontispiece, cloth 25 
cents, gilt edges 38 cents. 

MARMION: 

A Tale of Flodden Field, by Sir Walter Scott. One volume, l8mo., frontis 

piece, cloth 25 cents, gilt edges 38 cents. 
LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL: 

A Poem, by Sir \Vaiter Scott. One volume, 18mo., fr( iitispiece, cloth 2b 
cents, gilt edges 38 cents. 

Wi.lter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present day, and deservedly so. lU 
dHscril.is that which is most easily and generallv understood with more vivacitv and ellecl than 
iiey other writer. His style is clear. Mowing, and transpai-ent ; his sentiments, ol which hm style 
is an easy and natural medium, are common l(i him with his reancrs. — Jlii-.lilt. 

SPINCKES.-MANUAL OF PRIVATE DEVOTIONS: 

■Compute,) collected from the writings of Archiushop Lau.i, P.isliop Andrews, 
Bisliop Ken, Dr. Hickes, Mr. Kettleweil, .Mr. Si)inckcs, and other eminent 
old English divines. With a Preface by the Rev. Mr. Spinckes. Edited 
by Francis E. Paget, M. A. One elegant volume, KJmo., $1 00. 
A» manual o<" private devotions, it will he found most valuable —JVcw- York American. 



Appleton's Catalogue of Vahiable Puhlirutions. 

SPENCER— THE CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTED 

in the Ways of the Gospel and the Churcli, in a series of Discourses delivere« 
at St. James's Churcli, Goshen, New- York. By the Rev. J. A. Spencer 
M. A., late Rector. One volume, 16mo., $1 25. 

This is a very useful volume of Sermons : respectable in style, sound in doctrine, and affec 
ilionate in tone, they are well adapted for reading in the family circle, or placing on the familj 
book-shelf. * * * VVe think it a work of which the circulation is likely to promote true reli 
i;ioii and genuine piety. It is enriched with a body of excellent notes selected from the writing! 
;>f the dead and livinir ornaments of the Churcli in England and this country. — Trut Catholic. 

SPRAGUE— TRUE AND FALSE RELIGION. 

Lectures illustrating the Contrast hetween true Christianity and various otliei 
Systems. By \V*illiam B. Sprague, D. D. One volume, 12mo., ^1 00. 

LECTURES TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 

By W. B. Sprague, D. D. With an Introductory Address, by Samuel Miller, 
D. D. Fourth edition. One volume, 12ino., 83 cents. 

SUTTON— MEDITATIONS ON THE SACRAMENT- 

Godly Meditations upon the most Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. By 
Christopher Sutton, D. D., late Prebend of Westminster. One volume, 
royal l6nio., elegantly ornamented, !^1 00. 
We announced in our last number the republication in this country of Sutton's " Meditations 

on tlie Lord's Supc- ,-' and, having since read the work, are prepared to recommend it warmly and 

without qualifical.on tothe perusal of our readers. — Banner of the Cross. 

DISCE MORI— LEARN TO DIE: 

A Religious Discourse, moving every Christian man to enter into a Serious 
Remembrance of his End. By Christopher Sutton, D. D. One volume, 
16mo., $1 00. 

Of the three works of this excellent author lately reprinted, the " Disce Mori " is, in our judg- 
ment, decidedly the brst. We do not believe that a single journal or clergyman in the Church 
will be found to say a word in its disparagement. — Churchman. 

DISCE VIVERE— LEARN TO LIVE: 

Wherein is shown that the Life of Christ is and ought to be an Express Pat- 
tern for Imitation unto the Life of a Christian. By Christopher Sutton, 
D. D. One volume, 16mo., $1 00. 

In the " Disce Vivere," the author moulded his materials, after llie manner of a Kempis, into 
in '• Iniitatio Christi ;" each chapter inculcating some duty, upon the pattern of Him who gave 
Himself to be the beginning and the end of all perfection — Editor's Preface. 

SWART— LETTERS TO MY GODCHILD, 

By the Rev. J. Swart, A. M., of the Diocese of Western New- York. One 
volume, 32ino., cloth, gilt leaves, 38 cents. 
The design of this little work, as expressed by the author in the preface, is, the discharging oj 
Sponsorial obligation.-: We have read it with interest and pleasure, and deem it well fitted to se- 
cure its end. — Primitive Standard. 

SHERLOCK— THE PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN; 

Or, the Devout Penitent ; a Book of Devotion, containing the Whole Duty of 
a Christiaa in all Occasions and Necessities, fitted to the main . se of a holy 
Life. By R. Sherlock, D D. With a Life of the Author, by the Right 
Rev. Bishop Wilson, Author of " Sacra Privata," &c. Lne elegant vol- 
ume, IGmo., $1 00. 

Considered as a manual of private devotien, and a means of practical preparation for the Holy 
Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, this book is among the best, if not the best, ever 
^^immended to the members of our Church. — Churchman. 

SILLIMAN.-A GALLOP AMONG AMERICAN SCENERY; 

Or, Sketches of American Scenes and Military Adventure. 
Si'liman One volume, 16nio., 75 cents. 

21 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 

SHERWOOD— DUTY IS SAFETY; 

Or, Troublesome Tom, by Mrs. Sliurwood. One volume, small 4to., illustra 
t«d with wood cuts, cloth, 25 cenls. 

THINK BEFORE YOU ACT, 

By Mrs. Sherwood. One volume, small 4to., wood cuts, cloth, 2o cent*. 

JACK THE SAILOR-BOY, 

liy Mrs. Sherwood. One volume, small 4to., wood cuts, cloth, 25 cents. 

Mrs. Sherwood's stories carry "itli tlic^ni ahvays such an excellent moral, that no chiiJcar. ie» 
liu'iii without heconiiii^' helUx.—Pliiladeljilua Enquirer. 

SINCLAIR— SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTCH; 

Or, the Western Circuit. By Catharine Sinclair, aulhor of Modern Accora 
plishments. Modern Society, &c. &c. One volume, 12mo., 75 cents. 

SHETLAND AND THE SHETLANDERS ; 

Or, the Northern Circuit. By Catiiarine Sinclair, author of Scotland and the 
Scotch, Holiday House, &c. &c. One volume, 12mo., 88 cents. 
Tlie author has proveil herself to he a lady of high talent and rich cultivated mind. — JV. Y. jlttu 

SMITH— SCRIPTURE AND GEOLOGY; 

On the Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geologica 
Science. Eight Lectures. By John Pye Smith, D. D., author of th« 
Scripture Testimony of the Messiah, &.c. &c. One vol., 12mo., $1 25. 

ADVENTURES OF CAPT. JOHN SMITH, 

The Founder of the Colony of Virginia. By the author of Uncle Philip's 
Conversations. One volume, 18mo., frontispiece, 38 cents. 

Forming one of the sericsof" Library for my Young Countrymen." 
It will be read by youth with all the interest of a novel, and certainly with much more profit 

DISCOURSES ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

Select Discourses on the Functions of the Nervous System, in opposition U 
Phrenology, Materialism, and Atheism ; to which is prefixed a Lecture or 
ihe Diversities of the Human Character, arising from Physiological Pecu- 
liarities. By John Augustine Smith, M. D. One vol., 12mo., 75 cents. 

PRODUCTIVE FARMING. 

A Familiar Digest of the Most Recent Discoveries of Liebig, Davy, Johnston 
and other celebrated Writers on Vegetable Chemistry, showing how tlu 
results of Tillage might be greatly augmented. By Joseph A. Smith. Ont- 
volume, 12mo., paper cover 31 cents, cloth 50 cents. 

SOUTHGATE.— TOUR THROUGH TURKEY 

And Persia. Narrative of a Tour through Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia, anc 
Mesopotamia, with an Introdu(-tion and Occasional Observations upon tlu 
Condition of Mohammedanism and Christianity in those countries. B) 
the Rev. Horatio Southgate, Missionary of the American Episcopal «hurc h 
Two volumes, 12mo., plates, $2 00. 
SOUTHEY.— THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 
Of Robert Southey, Esq., LL. D. The ton volume London edition in one ele- 
gant volume, royal 8vo., with a fine portrait and vignette, $3 50. 
At the age of si.Tty-three I have undertaken to collect and edit my poetical works, with the last 
corrections that I can expect to bestow upon them. They have obtained a reputation equal tc 
iMV wishes. * * Thus to collect and revise them is a duty which I owe to thiit part of the pub- 
lic by whom they have been auspiciously received, and to those who will take a lively concern in 
my "ood name when 1 shall have i[cp:\ni:ii.—Enract from .'lulJior's Preface. 

T'lie l)eauties of »lr. Southoy's poetry are such, that thi.5 edition can hardly fail to find a place 
In th» library of every man fond of elegant literature.— fic/ecti* Revieio 



Appleton's Catalogue of Valuable Publications. 
TAYLOR— THE SACRED ORDER AND OFFICES 

Of Ejiis(o|>;icy AsserteiJ ;iik1 Waintaiiied ; to which is added, Clems Domini, 
a Discourse on the OlJice Ministerial, by tlie Right Rev. Bishop Jeremy 
Taylor, D. D. One volume, IGmo., $1 00. 

Till! ropridt hi a portable form of this eminent divine's masterly defence of Episcopacy, cannot 
fail of being welcoiiieil by every Cliurcliman. 

Tlio publisliers have presented this jewel in a fitting casket. — JV. Y. American. 

' THE GOLDEN GROVE: 

A choice Manual, containing what is to be Believed, Practised, and Desired, 
or prayed for ; the Prayers being fitted for the several Days of the Week. 
To wiiich is added, a Guide for the Penitent, or a Model drawn up for the 
Help of Devout Souls wounded with Sin. Also, festival Hymns, &c. By 
the Right Rev. Bishop Jeremy Taylor. One volume, IGnio., 50 cents. 

THE YOUNG ISLANDERS: 

A Tale of the Last Century, by Jeflerys Taylor. One volume, 16mo., beauti- 
fully illustrated, 75 cents. 

This fascinating and elegantly illustrated volume for the young is pronounced to equal in inte- 
rest De Foe's immortal work, Robinson Crusoe. 

HOME EDUCATION, 

By Isaac Taylor, author of" Natural History of Enthusiasm," &c. Sec. See- 
end edition. One volume, 12mo., $1 00. 
A very enlightened, just, and Christian view of a most important subject. — Am. Bib. Repos. 

PHYSICAL THEORY 

Of another Life, by Isaac Taylor. Third edition. One vol., 12mo., 86 cent8. 
One of the most learned and extraordinary works of modern times. 

SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 

Lectures on Spiritual Christianity, by Isaac Taylor. One vol., 12mo., 75 cents 

The view which this volume gives of Chi istianity, both as a system of truth and a system <rf 
duty, is in the highest degree instructive. — Albany Evening Journal. 

■ NATURAL HISTORY OF SOCIETY 



In tlie Barbarous and Civilized State. An Essay towards Discovering the 
Origin and Course of Human Improvement, by W. Cooke Taylor, LL. D., 
«fec., of Trinity College, Dublin. Handsomely printed on fine paper. Two 
volumes, 12mo., $2 25. 

THOUGHTS IN PAST YEARS: 

A collection of Poetry, chiefly Devotional, by the author of The Cathedral 
One volume, 16mo., elegantly printed, $1 25. 

TOKEN OF AFFECTION. 

One volume, 32nio., frontisi)iece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. 

FRIENDSHIP. 

One voii-me, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leav°-'» Jl cents. 

LOVE. 

Jne eolume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. 

REMEMBRANCE. 

One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. 

THE HEAFiT. 

One volume, 32mo., frontispiece, cloth, gilt leaves, 31 cents. 

Forming a portion of the scries of" Miniature Classical Library." 
Each volume consists of nearly one hundred appropriate extracts flora tho beet writers of Eng 
end and America. 

23 






Appleton's Catalog-ue of ValualilJ Fumjcutions. 



THOMSON. -THE SEASONS, 

A Poem, by Jmnes Tlionisoii. One vol., 32inn., rlotli, gilt leaves, 38 c« 

Forinin-t otic oftlie series of" Miniature Classical Library." 
Place " Tbo Seasons " in any lis'il, and llie poem appears faultlesa. S. C. ]{all. 

URE— DICTIONARY OF ARTS, 

Muiu;!;i(tiires, luid Mines, containing ;i clear Exposition of their Princii)le8 
Practice. By Andrew Ure, M. D., F. R. S , &c. llluslrated witli 1 
Engravings on wood. One thick volume of 1340 pages, hound in leal 
$5 00, or in two volumes, $5 50. 

In every point of view, a work like the present can but be regarded ns a benefit done to Ih' 
icJv. and practical science, to connnerce and industry, and an important addition to a spec 
I.-,cniture the exclusive production of the present century, and the present state of peace ano 
lizatiuh — ^theiKnum. 

Dr. Ure';? Dictinnary, of which the American edition is now completed, is a stupendous i 
of persevering assiduity, combined with genius and taste. For all the benefit of individual er 
prise in the practical arts and manuficturos, and for the enhancement of general prospciity lhr( 
the extension of accurate knowledge of political economy, we have not any work worthy t 
compared witli this important volume. We are convinced that manufacturers, inTchants.tra 
men, students of natural and experimental philosophy, inventive mechanics, tnen of onulc 
members of legislatures, and all who desire to comprehend something of the rapidly acceler^ 
progress of those discoveries which facilitate the .supply of human wants, and the augment: 
of social comforts with the national weal, will find this invaluable Dictionary a perennial so 
of salutary instruction and edifying enjoyment.— J\'a?i07ia/ Intelligencer. 

VERY LITTLE TALES, 

For Very Little Children, in single Syllable.s of three and four Letters— I 
series. One volume, square 18mo., numerous illustrations, cloth, 38 cei 
Seco7id Series, in single Syllables of four and five Lettjgrs. One volu: 
square ISmo., numerous iiliistrations— to match first series — 38 cents. 

WAYLAND.-LIMITATIONS OF HUMAN 

Responsibility. By Francis Wayland, D. D. One volume, 18nio., 38 cer 

CoNTE.sTs— I. The Nature of the Subject. II. Individual Responsibility. III. Indivi. 
Responsibility (continued). IV. Peisecutioii on account of Religious Opinions. V. Propa^ai 
of Truth. VI. Voluntary Associations. VII. Ecclesiastical Associations. VIII. Official Uesi 
sibility. rX. 'I"he Slavery Question. 

WILBERFORCE— MANUAL FOR COMMUNICANTS; 

Or, The Order for administering the Holy Communion ; conveniently arral 
ed with Meditations and Prayers from old English divines : being the 
charistica of Samuel Wilberforce, M. A., Archdeacon of Surrey, (ada 
to the American service.) 38 cents, gilt leaves 50 cents. 

Wo most o.irni.'slly commend tlie work. — CIturchman. 

WILSON— SACRA PRIVATA. 

The Private Meditations, Devotions, and Prayers of the Right Rev. T. 
son, D. 1)., Lord Bishop of Soder and Man. First complete edition, 
volume, 16mo., elegantly ornamented, $1 00. 
The reprint is an honor (o the American press. The work itself is, perhaps, on the whotfl 
best devotional treatise in the language. It has never before in this country been printed ( 
— Churchman. 

A neat miniature edition, abridged for popular use, is also published. Price 31 centsj 

WOMAN'S WORTH ; 

Or, Hints to Raise the Female Character. First American from the last '. 

lish edition, with a Recommendatory Notice, by Emily Marshall. O' 
neat volume, 18mo., cloth gilt 38 cents, paper co\ cr 25 cents. 

'J'hc simtimentR nnd principles enforced in this book may be safely commended to the att< 
tjon of women of all r.'.nks — Lon'tun Atlas. 

YOUTH'S BOOK OF NATURE ; 

Or, The Four Seasons Illustrated, being Familiar Descriptions of Natural H 

tory, made during \Valks in the Country, by Rev. H. B. Draper. Illush 

ted with upwards of 50 wood Engravings. One vol., square 16ino., 75 cen 

One of the inort faultless volumes fur (ho young that has ever been is R^fi»U>>r. 

24 



